It's nice when actors (particularly intense and brooding serious actors) confess to being inspired by a fellow craftsman.

But hang on... oh, wait... Tom Cruise might not be so flattered by this particular form of flattery.

Apparently, intense and brooding Christian Bale WAS inspired by Tom Cruise, but unfortunately it was when he was filming American Psycho.

Mary Harron, who helmed the adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel back in 2000, told Black Book magazine that Christian was struggling "to work out the right way to behave" as psycho killer Patrick Bateman.

She went on: "We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet [and] watching what people did."

Hmm... tricky.

"And then one day [Christian] called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman," she continued. "And he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy."

Sorry, Tom. That "nothing behind the eyes" remark wasn't very flattering.

But still, you could look at it another way. Christian Bale often appears to exhibit a very intense UNfriendliness, so you're one up on him there.

Mr Bale might be Hollywood hot property these days, but his short fuse has landed him in a spot of bother on occasion...