Christian Bale has gone through extreme lengths to disguise himself as film characters, but his latest transformation almost sent him the most “insane” he’s felt to date – despite having nothing to do.
The Oscar-winning actor dropped to 120 lbs for The Machinist (2004) before regaining it all, and then some, for Batman Begins the following year, as well as an extra 40 lbs to play Dick Cheney in 2018 film Vice.
But for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new film The Bride!, in which Bale plays Frankenstein’s monster, he faced his biggest challenge yet: to still for six hours to have his makeup applied.
Bale, 52, was so used to physical health regimes that he struggled to sit still – so much that he would end up “screaming like crazy” on set to alleviate the “despair” and “all of that restraint that you have to display when you’re sitting still for that long”.
Bale told Entertainment Weekly: “It requires a great deal of stillness,” revealing his method kept him from going over the edge.
He considered unleashing his frustrations before arriving on set, but “didn’t want to do it driving into work because I thought I might cause a crash”.
Christian Bale had to still still for ages to have makeup applied in new film ‘The Bride!’ (Warner Bros Pictures)
Bale continued: “And I didn’t want to do it by myself because I thought everyone would just think I’m going nuts.”
Fortunately, his colleagues were understanding – and even ended up getting involved with his noisy process.
“Oh man, I’m telling you, the whole crew got involved by the end, because people would hear us screaming,” Bale said.
“We would open the doors, and gradually, a bit like the Bride’s revolution, a few people were going, ‘Can we do it too?’ And then by the end, there were like 30 people who would hear us and run to the makeup trailer to be a part of it and scream.”
In 2019, Bale vowed to stop shedding and gaining weight for film roles, telling Sunday Times Culture magazine: “I can’t keep doing it. I really can’t. My mortality is staring me in the face.”
Bale famously lost 120 lbs to play the insomniac Trevor Reznik in psychological drama The Machinist, which left him unable to walk up a flight of stairs.
Christian Bale lost 120 lbs for ‘The Machinist’ (Tartan Films)
“That’s the most Zen-like state I’ve ever been in my life,” he told The Guardian in 2018. “Two hours sleep, reading a book for 10 hours straight without stopping … unbelievable. You couldn’t rile me up. No rollercoaster of emotions. As soon as you start putting the food back in your stomach, the roller coaster comes back.”
He then put on 100 lbs in five months to play Batman in the first of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, admitting to IGN: “I did actually start to feel I was putting my body under too much pressure.”
It was for his role as former vice president Cheney in Adam McKay’s Vice that Bale decided to consult a nutritionist about his diet change, deciding “maybe somebody knows better than I do”.
Christian Bale piled on the pounds to play Vice President Dick Cheney in 2018 (Annapurna Pictures)
“They managed to get me up a good 40lbs. It’s never healthy to put on that amount of weight in a short amount of time, but I did it in the healthiest manner,” he told Star2.com.
The Bride!, starring Bafta-winning Jessie Buckley, follows Frankenstein’s creation of a female companion to his monster. It’s in cinemas on 6 March.
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