The renowned Oscar-winning actor Christian Bale has a long and successful career. In addition to his acting talent, he is popular for the incredible physical transformations he went through to get into certain roles. In this note we tell you five.
Christian bale is on everyone’s lips because we first saw it in the trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder What Cap the God Butcher. All made up and probably with a bit of CGI, the actor is shaven and has gray skin. However, this is not the only transformation (nor is it the most impressive) that he had in his career.
Christian bale He is one of the actors who had the most physical transformations throughout his professional career. But, although that is important and impressive, what is most striking and makes it incredible is that these physical changes are very drastic, to the point that he gained weight and/or lost more than 20 kilos in months.
However, after ups and downs in his weight, changes in his diet and exercise, bale He decided he wouldn’t do it anymore. In an interview from early 2019, the British actor spoke on the subject, saying: “I can’t keep doing it. I really can not”.
It should be noted that these physical transformations are not always necessary. Many actors (if not most) resort to prosthetics when they need to gain weight, makeup, among other things, but bale he preferred to become and resemble the role as much as he could on his own. For this, we leave you five movies where the actor went through incredible changes.
-American Psycho (2000)
When Christian bale talks about his greatest transformation does not usually put in the first place how he became Trevor Reznick for The Machinist (role for which he lost more than 20 kilos in four months), nor how a month and a half after finishing recording that film he had his first screen test for Batman Begins. The actor remarks that his biggest change was to give life to patrick batman in American Psychosince he even had to change his teeth.
“I liked my old teeth. I have a molding of them on a shelf. But with patrick batman, his physique is much more important than with most characters. He totally deals with the superficial and is incredibly narcissistic. He was looking at me in the mirror and it wasn’t right. I was warned that if I used caps, I might lisp… So I thought, ‘I like my teeth, but I’m not so attached to them that I ruin the whole movie because I refuse to do them.‘” he recounted bale in an interview during the promotion of the film.
In addition to this, the protagonist of the film has a clear obsession with his physical appearance, which forced him to bale to get in shape by gaining 81 kg of weight, basically focusing on muscle and maintaining a very low body fat percentage.
-The Machinist (2004)
In this film, Christian bale he was unrecognizable. She lost 27 kg in four months to play Trevor Reznick, a troubled train driver who had not been able to sleep for a year. For this role, the actor set out to go on a diet of a can of tuna and an apple daily, with coffee without sugar, managing to lose weight to 54 kg, something extreme for someone who measures around 1.80. The actor’s caloric intake was between 50 and 250 calories a day, when the WHO estimates that a man should consume between 2,000 and 2,500.
-Batman Begins (2005)
Shortly after finishing recording The Machinist, Christian Bale had the first screen tests of batmanbegins. So the actor had to get back in shape and gain about 100 pounds (of pure muscle) in a few months.
Although it did not become as in American PsychoBale he followed a workout that required extraordinary use of force so that he could rapidly gain muscle mass. He weighed up to 100 kg to give life to BruceWayne in the first film of the trilogy.
Since he had to reprise this role three times, the actor went through various physical transformations to play other characters during that time. In fighter (2010- half of the saga of Batman), bale lost weight again, although if we compare it with The Machinistthat time “only” lost 13 kg.
-American Hustle (2013)
the character he plays bale in this film, Irving Rosenfield, is somewhat messy in all aspects of his life, including his physical appearance. For this role, the actor changed his habits and gained 20 kg. He ate too much and did nothing. “I ate a lot of donuts, a lot of cheeseburgers, and whatever ended up on my hands. I literally ate everything that got in my way. I was at 83 kg and went to 103“He confessed in a chat with People.
-Vice (2018)
This time the change was not only physical, Christian bale he also had the help of makeup artists who would make him look older to play dickcheney, businessman and politician who was Vice President of the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush.
It could be said that this film was the actor’s last dramatic weight gain. However, when he was accepted to play Cheneythey warned bale that she didn’t need to put herself through the effort of gaining weight, as there were prosthetics and makeup that would do the job. But, although he spent several hours in the make-up department, the actor gained 18 kg.
And that’s not all, but he also became obsessed with internalizing the character: “It really was obsessive. There are a lot of interviews with him. Mr Cheney and I have each of them on my phone. It’s packed with videos of Cheney. And I spend hours and hours looking at them, imitating, walking on myself, trying to get the position of the body and all that“, he had told ScreenRant.
One year after ViceChristian Bale starred Le Mans ’66 and was forced to lose 31 kg to be able to give life to the professional pilot Ken Miles. But it seems that this was the end of the actor’s drastic changes. Soon we will see him interpret Cap the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder, but compared to the previous roles, we did not notice a big transformation. We will have to wait to see it in the cinema and check it out.