“You mad bastard”: when Matthew McConaughey headbutted Christian Bale
If I told you that when Matthew McConaughey and Christian Bale worked together, one of them got headbutted, you’d probably assume that it was McConaughey. Famous for his laid-back Texas charm, the How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days star seems to be a far cry from Bale, an actor known for playing intense characters and putting in an equally intense amount of work to prepare for them. You can almost picture the Dark Knight star getting keyed up on-set, placing himself in the precise headspace of his character, and letting the Method take control. But it was actually the other way around. During the production of the long-forgotten dragon epic Reign of Fire in 2002, McConaughey went all-in on his performance and nearly forced the crew to jump in.
As the Interstellar star recalled in 2012, “That scene where we’re fighting, and I headbutt him… it was a complete accident. But in the take, I just put it right on his forehead.”
“It dropped me like a sack of potatoes,” Bale remembered on a separate occasion. In the movie, you see me crawl around the ground for a couple of seconds to try to find my bearings – that is real! Then I thought I had to get up and finish the scene, or it was going to be no use. I could see that the film crew were staring to see if I was all right. When we finished, I asked Matthew if he was OK. He said, ‘Yeah, you mad bastard – I headbutted you!’”
McConaughey was impressed with Bale’s commitment to the scene, saying, “He immediately swelled up like a frickin’ tennis ball, but he kept going. I knew I’d screwed up. I looked in his eyes and I saw him go ‘Grrrr!’ and then we kept going…. Later, he had his moment to be pissed off at me, which he absolutely deserved. There was no drama about the situation whatsoever, though he wasn’t really happy about it.”
Sadly, Bale’s act of professional heroism and McConaughey’s not-so-chill moment of method acting couldn’t save the film from its B-movie status. Set in the near future, it imagines a world in which the construction of a London tunnel has disturbed long-dormant dragons who take over most of the globe. Bale plays a survivalist named Quinn Abercromby, who teams up with US vigilante Denton Van Zan (McConaughey) to save the planet from the fire-breathing predators once and for all. It’s an over-the-top, even campy entry into the fantasy genre with CGI that hasn’t aged particularly well.
At the time of production, Bale had already starred in American Psycho, and McConaughey was about to start his rom-com era. Reign of Fire wasn’t exactly an obvious choice for either actor, but according to Bale, that was precisely its appeal for him. “I’m kind of attracted by movies where there is a real possibility of it going badly wrong,” he admitted. “There have been movies where other people have said to me ‘You’re nuts for doing this! Why would you risk doing this?’ and I’ve kind of realised that that’s what I enjoy.”
No offence to Mr Bale, but Reign of Fire aside, he doesn’t seem to be very good at picking bad movies. His track record for making critically acclaimed box office smashes is about as solid as it gets.
