The only body transformation Christian Bale refused to make: “I don’t feel like I can do it”
The best actors in the business aren’t required to drastically alter their physical appearance to be remembered as their era’s finest performers, but history has shown that it definitely helps, with Christian Bale repeatedly putting himself through the wringer in the name of his art.
Think of the stars celebrated by their peers as the best ever, and the chances are high they’ve undergone at least one drastic transformation and more than likely won an Academy Award for their troubles. Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Jack Nicholson are just some of the stars who’ve gained and lost weight and buried themselves under prosthetics on their way to greatness.
It goes without saying that Bale is cut from a similar cloth, having pinballed between emaciated and jacked on multiple occasions. He was ripped in American Psycho, skeletal in The Machinist, buff in the Dark Knight trilogy, portly in American Hustle and Vice, and scrawny in The Fighter.
There’s an inherent set of risks that come with actors alternating between starving themselves and consuming as many calories as possible, something Bale is fully aware of. Obviously, that hasn’t stopped him from doing it multiple times, although there was one occasion when he drew the line.
When Oliver Stone opted to wade back into political waters with the biographical and blackly comedic biopic W, his biggest challenge wasn’t finding somebody to play George W Bush; it was finding a willing financial backer. “We were turned down by everybody for money, including your Aunt Gertrude,” he lamented to GQ. “It was humiliating. I make no bones about it.”
The way Hollywood works is that studios and production companies tend to be more willing to invest when a big-name star is attached, which led Stone directly to Bale’s door. The actor agreed to play the role and underwent costume and makeup tests before suddenly getting cold feet.
“Originally, I went for Christian Bale,” Stone confirmed. “We did some rigorous prosthetic tests and spent a lot of dough, thousands and thousands of dollars, and then Christian said, ‘I just don’t feel like I can do it.'” With his first choice out of the picture, the Platoon director sought Josh Brolin instead, who was more accommodating to playing ‘Dubya’.
Ironically, Bale would go on to play Bush’s vice president Dick Cheney in Vice and earn an Oscar nomination for his troubles, and that transformation was a lot more labour intensive after it required him to pile on the pounds, shave his head, and spend countless hours in the makeup chair every day.
W would have been a walk in the park by comparison, only for Bale to decide in the midst of his prosthetic tests that he didn’t want to inhabit the White House for Stone.
