Patrick Bateman

Patrick Bateman
Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman
First appearance	The Rules of Attraction
Last appearance	Lunar Park
Created by	Bret Easton Ellis
Portrayed by	Christian Bale (American Psycho) Dechen Thurman (This Is Not an Exit) Michael Kremko (American Psycho 2) Matt Smith & Benjamin Walker (American Psycho)
Information
Aliases	Marcus Halberstram Paul Allen
Gender	Male
Occupation	Investment banker
Title	Vice President
Family	Sean Bateman (brother)
Nationality	American
Education	Phillips Exeter Academy Harvard College Harvard Business School

Patrick Bateman is a fictional character, the villain protagonist and narrator of the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and its film adaptation. He is a wealthy, materialistic Wall Street investment banker who leads a double life as a serial killer. Bateman has also briefly appeared in other Ellis novels.

Bateman works as a specialist in mergers and acquisitions at the fictional Wall Street investment firm of Pierce & Pierce (also Sherman McCoy's firm in The Bonfire of the Vanities) and lives at 55 West 81st Street, Upper West Side in the American Gardens Building (where he is a neighbor of actor Tom Cruise). In his secret life, however, Bateman is a serial killer murdering a variety of people, from colleagues to the homeless to prostitutes. His crimes—including rape, torture, necrophilia, and cannibalism—are described in graphic detail in the novel.

Bateman comes from a wealthy family. His parents have a house on Long Island, and he mentions a summer house in Newport. His parents divorced sometime earlier, while his mother became sick and now resides at a sanatorium. His father, who first appeared in Ellis' preceding novel The Rules of Attraction, grew up on an estate in Connecticut, and now owns an apartment in the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. He is assumed to be dead as he is mentioned only in past tense during the novel. Bateman's younger brother Sean attends Camden College (and is a protagonist of Ellis' previous novel, The Rules of Attraction, in which Patrick Bateman was first introduced). Bateman attended Phillips Exeter Academy for prep school. He graduated from Harvard College in 1984 and Harvard Business School two years later, and moved to New York City.