The movie that made Christian Bale want to quit acting: “I don’t ever want to do this”
Every actor dreams of performing on the world’s biggest stage. It’s a cutthroat industry, and those who take the gamble and win are often driven to keep playing the odds in the hope of standing alongside the greats of cinema. However, this narrative is often idealised. When Christian Bale got his first major break with Empire of the Sun, he realised that he wasn’t as keen on being a big-time actor as he once thought. The reality of fame and the pressures of the industry made him reconsider the glamorous image often associated with Hollywood success.
That being said, Bale has undoubtedly carved out an interesting niche for himself in Hollywood. Outside of being one of the most interesting actors to watch onscreen, he had a reputation for taking on any role without any regard for his self-preservation, whether that meant slimming down to a twig on The Machinist or turning in a perfect performance as Dick Cheney in Vice despite playing someone decades his senior.
When he first started, though, anyone’s dream of working with Steven Spielberg usually came with a few caveats. Everyone is there to do a job, but working alongside one of the biggest filmmakers in the world probably had a lot more baggage, and Bale got an education pretty quickly when working on the period drama.
Speaking with GQ, Bale remembered just how difficult it was to juggle both parts of his life when filming, saying, “I had no idea at the time how unique that film was. I didn’t realise that every film didn’t build a bloody runway in the middle of a marshland in Spain. It wasn’t until much later, when I was working on smaller films, that I looked back and said, ‘Oh, that was a big one.”
At the same time, getting into the business at that young of an age is bound to do a number on anyone’s psyche. While Bale managed to come out on the other side as one of the most exciting actors of his generation, he did admit that he wanted to run away from being an actor once he got his first taste.
For him, one blockbuster was enough, telling The Talks, “[Spielberg] made me think, ‘I don’t ever want to do this again.’ Not him personally; I had a wonderful time with him. But the experience of doing it at that age is not something I’d recommend for anybody.” If Bale was going to continue on the big screen, though, he was going to do it on his terms.
If you look at every role he took on afterwards, it was usually about pushing himself forward as an actor rather than trying to cash a paycheck. Patrick Bateman from American Psycho is completely different from something like Batman or an illusionist in The Prestige, but the fact that he could do all of them back to back told his audience a lot more about the actor they were working with.
This wasn’t just someone looking to make a living sleepwalking his way through one role that he lucked into. Bale was an artist in every sense of the word, and while Empire of the Sun gave him cold feet about the future, the next few years saw him making an eclectic career that any actor would be proud to have on their resume.
