The surprising movie role Christian Bale “didn’t quite nail”
Now more than 35 years into his acting career, Christian Bale has accumulated a body of work that’s seen him roundly labelled as one of his generation’s finest actors, and a performance of his that’s anything less than stellar at the bare minimum has become something of a collector’s item.
He might have an Academy Award and two Golden Globes under his belt as proof that his filmography has been recognised and celebrated by his peers, too, but Bale hasn’t always been convinced by the strength of his own work, even in the movies that saw him become what many have deemed as the defining iteration of a pop culture icon.
Through Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, Bale and director Christopher Nolan took the blockbuster comic book adaptation to new heights both critically and commercially, but as the trilogy’s Bruce Wayne admitted to Yahoo, he wasn’t overly enthused by what he brought to the table: “I didn’t quite manage what I hoped I would throughout the trilogy,” he said. “Chris did, but my own sense of self is like, ‘I didn’t quite nail it.’”
Understandably, it did take him a while to get used to the idea of trying to deliver a layered and rounded performance while encased head-to-toe in a rubber costume, with Bale’s instincts at odds with his constrictions. He commented: “I found when I put on the suit, I felt like, ‘I just feel like a bloody idiot if I don’t use this as a means of, ‘It’s his true monstrous self that he allows to come out in that moment.’ Let’s do that.'”
Jokingly pointing a finger of blame at The Dark Knight co-star Heath Ledger, Bale remarked that he “turned up and just completely ruined all my plans,” leaving him feeling that “he’s so much more interesting than me and what I’m doing.”
Bale has hardly become synonymous with big-budget and effects-driven blockbusters either before or since his three-film stint as Batman, and although he noted that he’s “eternally grateful” to Christopher Nolan, his initial misgivings of committing to a role as iconic as the Caped Crusader left him torn: “It did change everything. It was the first time I had done a film of that magnitude,” he elaborated to Variety. “That was a real learning curve for me. I wrestled with it for a long time.”
It’s entirely a matter of personal preference as to whether Bale made for the greatest live-action Batman there’s ever been, but even those with a softer spot for Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Ben Affleck, or Robert Pattinson will be the first to acknowledge that he donned the cape and cowl in the superhero’s most consistent string of cinematic successes.
