The movie Christian Bale regrets making the most: “It’s a great thorn in my side”
While many actors train extensively, Christian Bale stepped into the spotlight after seeing his sister find success in the theatre, prompting him to do the same. However, when he was suggested for the main role in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun, the actor’s whole world changed. Earning praise for his performance, he went on to appear in more popular movies, like Newsies, Little Women, and Pocahontas.
However, despite working with some talented directors like Jane Campion and Todd Haynes, he still remained a relatively unknown figure in Hollywood until he was cast as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. His performance as the soulless killer businessman living in New York was pretty spectacular, even if he maintained the Bateman persona when the camera stopped rolling. That was one of his first forays into method acting – even if he claims he is not a method actor.
Following American Psycho, Bale was offered some more roles – but none were exactly that good. He told ONTD, “It came from a year and a half before The Machinist, where I didn’t work at all. Nobody wanted me for anything. Well, a couple of people did, but for pretty bad things. So, it was kind of realising that I had to reevaluate and reinvent at this point.” However, The Machinist gave Bale’s career a new lease of life, with the actor going to extreme lengths for the part, such as losing 60 pounds.
Since then, Bale has appeared in many acclaimed movies, such as The Dark Knight trilogy, playing Batman, The Fighter, American Hustle, and Vice. However, there was a movie he took on in 2009 that surprised many people. Although he appeared in Christopher Nolan’s superhero trilogy, Bale has never been known as a franchise kind of guy.
So, he shocked fans when he took on the leading role in Terminator Salvation, the fourth movie in the franchise created by James Cameron. Directed by McG, Bale played a grown-up John Connor alongside actors such as Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Anton Yelchin, but sadly the film did not perform well with critics.
It was an odd choice for Bale, and in an interview with MTV he actually revealed his disinterest in the role from the start, turning it down more than once. “I said no three times. I thought that the franchise…I went ‘Nah, there’s no story there,’” he boldly admitted. He then revealed what made him change his mind: “There’s a perverse side to me, where people were telling me that there’s no way on God’s Earth that I should take that role, and I was thinking the same thing. But when people started verbalizing that to me, I started to go, ‘Oh really? All right, well watch this then.’ So there was a little bit of that involved in the choice.”
Once Bale got to filming, he came to realise that perhaps he was right, after all, and that listening to your gut is always a good idea. “It’s a great thorn in my side, because I wish we could have reinvigorated [the franchise]. And unfortunately, during production, you could tell that wasn’t happening. It’s a great shame.”
