The true story behind Christian Bale’s legendary on-set rant
In 2009, Christian Bale starred in Terminator: Salvation, the fourth film in the iconic sci-fi franchise. He played John Connor, the leader of humanity’s resistance against Skynet, and the film was directed by McG, of Charlie’s Angels fame. If none of this rings a bell, though, that’s perfectly understandable. After all, the movie was rejected by fans and didn’t do gangbusters at the box office, leading it to be mostly forgotten as a piece of cinema. However, most film fans will almost certainly remember something that happened during production. Why? Because it caused a huge scandal which completely overshadowed the movie.
Today, the idea of Bale starring in a Terminator movie sounds strange. Salvation came in the midst of his three-film run as Batman, and he has mostly eschewed blockbusters outside of those genre-defining Christopher Nolan epics. In truth, joining the franchise also sounded odd to Bale himself at the time, and he turned it down three times before finally begrudgingly signing up.
In 2018, Bale told MTV, “I went, ‘Nah, there’s no story there.”
However, he admitted he’s a stubborn soul, and that played a part in his eventually agreeing to the part. “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,” Bale said. “But when people started verbalising 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.”
The American Psycho star continued, “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.”
Perhaps this sinking feeling precipitated what happened in July 2008 when Bale was shooting Salvation in New Mexico. In the middle of an intense scene, with Bale completely in the zone, he couldn’t help noticing cinematographer Shane Hurlbut walking on set to adjust a lighting setup. When Hurlbut did it again, though, and this time got in Bale’s eye line, the frustrated actor unleashed a volley of verbal abuse, which must have stopped the entire crew in their tracks.
Hurlbut apologised repeatedly to Bale, but this did little to stop the star, who was in full-on rant mode. He threw an array of F-bombs at the cinematographer and, at one point, even threatened to destroy the man’s camera equipment.
It was an outburst that would have been greatly embarrassing for Bale, even if it had stayed behind closed doors on the Salvation set. However, when the audio of the entire tirade leaked online in February 2009, the whole debacle became public and likely tainted the movie in the eyes of the public.
Bale was raked over the coals in some quarters for allowing himself to fly off the handle in such an unprofessional manner, and he undoubtedly gained a reputation as a hothead from it. On the other hand, though, some fellow actors did defend him, claiming most people don’t have a true idea of the pressures actors are under every day on set.
Whatever the case, when reflecting on one of the lowest moments of his professional career to MTV, Bale confessed, “That was a very unusual occasion. Great learning lesson for me. No matter how much you lose yourself in a scene, you do not allow yourself to behave that way. And yeah, of course, I’ve got enormous regrets about it.”
