Bale Regrets Stress To His Body

If you’ve seen THE MACHINIST—and if you haven’t, why not?—you know how disturbing it was to even look at Christian Bale, he’d lost so much weight. He looked downright cadaver-ish. Then he went from that straight to having to bulk up to play Batman. Then he lost a lot of weight again for RESCUE DAWN. Then gained back to his healthy weight. Then got all freaky skinny again for THE FIGHTER. Then he packed on weight to play Dick Cheney in VICE and for his role in AMERICAN HUSTLE. I have for some time been worried about his health. You just can’t do that to yourself and it not have detrimental effects. And now he’s got that new movie out, FORD VS. FERRARI, and he’s shrunk himself again. Quit it, Christian!

Fortunately Mr. Bale seems to be through with the extreme body alteration for the sake of his art. Or at least he says he is. “Yeah, I’m 45 now, I’m beginning to actually worry about it…think about it.” And he saw what Gary (Dracula) Oldman was able to do in a fat suit, portraying Winston Churchill. “…whereas before I would laugh when people went, ‘Can’t you just sort of put on a suit?’ It was like, ‘No, no, that’s now how it works.’” But after seeing Oldman, he says, “Oh, that’s exactly how he did it. He’s brilliant in that movie…So let that be an object lesson in ways you can go about it.”