Christian Bale names the most fun he’s ever had making a movie: “Those times were great for me”
Despite being one of the most sought-after actors working in Hollywood, Christian Bale doesn’t care for the celebrity side of movie stardom, which makes sense when he gained early experiences of the trials, tribulations, and pitfalls that come with being a child star.
Playing the lead role in a Steven Spielberg movie that was released when he was only 13 years old opened Bale’s eyes to the highs and lows of a career in the performing arts. He’s been a fixture on screens ever since, but he’s never been one to present himself as an open book when it comes to discussing anything that isn’t related to the work.
Nobody can deny that he’s one of his generation’s greatest talents, but it would be much more of a stretch to suggest that Bale is famed for his affable, enthusiastic, and engaged personality. He’s a person who clearly treats the grind of press, publicity, and promotion as a means to an end, but he’ll occasionally let his guard down.
Famed for his transformative turns that have seen him reinvent his body countless times for various roles covering all genres, Bale is wary that he could have been pigeonholed as the guy who either loses or gains all the weight. Instead, his dedication has become secondary to the strength of his performances, even if one of the parts that required him to drop serious poundage became his favourite experience.
The combination of Bale and Werner Herzog was never going to be anything less than interesting, and even though he emaciated himself yet again and ate live maggots in the name of realism, the Academy Award winner revealed to The Talks that their collaboration was the most fun he’d ever had on set.
“I can’t help but immediately think of various experiences with Werner Herzog on Rescue Dawn,” Bale shared when pressed on his most cherished memory from a production. “With us, Werner included doing things that everyone was looking at, saying, ‘But guys, you’re going to die! What are you doing? You’re going to really catch a wild snake and maybe get bitten by it!”
The eccentric auteur is always good value for money, whether he’s making a film or simply going about his business, leaving Bale to reflect on the “great times” he had in the survival drama: “These crazy helicopter pilots in Thailand taking off the tops of the trees as we were flying so low over the jungle; those times were great for me. I just enjoy them monumentally.”
For the audience, Rescue Dawn was hardly a barrel of laughs when Bale’s Dieter Dengler was shot down, captured, starved, and tortured before escaping into the jungle, but it sounds like the leading man had a whale of a time.
