8 Movie Roles That Christian Bale OWNED With His Crazy Body Transformations!

Christian Bale is a British-American actor who has pushed himself to extremes just to ace the role he is playing in his film, and his efforts have always paid off. With a huge fan following, the actor is known to be one of the best in the industry.

His intense method acting style and physical transformations have stunned the audiences and the critics alike. The actor has literally gone from being extremely skinny to having a strong muscular self. From looking old to looking really young, he has done it all very impressively.

The 47-year-old actor has won many awards for his performances in multiple films that have been remembered for his acting and the preparation he went through to ace that role. Here are some extreme transformations that Christian Bale went through in various films. 

1. Velvet Goldmine

The film was released in 1998, and Bale plays the role of a music journalist who is looking into the retreat of singer Brian Slade. The film shows him in a very Bowie kind of style that shouts glam rock. Talking about his look, Bale had told E! News:

"I don't find it difficult to not eat, so you know, so I eat just soup. Well...actually, I started off, and I was going running a lot, and then my mum came to stay with me for one night in the apartment that I had in London. And I was getting up at like 6 in the morning and going running, and she was like, 'Christian, what are you doing?' And I said, 'I've got to lose weight for it.' And she said, 'well hold a bit, you're doing a film about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Why don't you do it the way they did it? They weren't out running, they just weren't out eating. They didn't eat, but they drank a hell of a lot and lived very unhealthily. So I went, 'yes, cheers, mom, alright' and took that to heart, and it works."

2. American Psycho

Bale plays the role of a psycho killer, Patrick Bateman, in the movie that came out in 2000. His body looks totally in shape, and he had previously talked about his role to The Guardian, "I liked my old teeth, I have a molding of them on a shelf. But with Patrick Bateman, his physicality is much more important than with most characters. He deals totally in the superficial, and he's incredibly narcissistic. I looked at myself in the mirror, and it just wasn't right. I was warned that if I got caps, I could get a lisp, and you might still be able to tell in close-up. So I thought, I like my teeth, but I'm not so attached to them that I'm going to ruin this whole movie because I refuse to get them done."

3. The Machinist

This film marked Bale going through one of his massive physical transformations. He had lost a lot of weight for the role, and his appearance literally shocked everyone. He played the role of Trevor Reznik, who is an insomniac and mentally unstable.

"It just didn't enter my head that it could be done any other way, really." He told BBC. "I just realized, 'Okay, I have to lose weight.' I just had no idea how much I would have to lose in order to get the look that I was searching for. "I had a photograph of [country singer], Hank Williams, when he was only 29, but he was looking like he was coming on 50, I guess just from abuse. It was a photograph of him getting released from jail just a few months before he died. He's shirtless, and he looks a wreck, absolutely emaciated. So I stuck that on the front of the script to be kind of my image of what Trevor should be, and then just kept going and going and trying to reach that."

4. Rescue Dawn

In this film, Bale has to play the role of Deiter Dengler, who was 98 pounds and was rescued in Werner Herzog's Vietnam war. He had to lose the Batman weight and go back to his regular weight. The actor had lost 65 pounds only for the role he was playing.

The filmmaker Herzog told Esquire UK, " I had the most astonishing experiences with him where he lost 65 pounds for a role he accepted. The amount of sacrifice. He's the most diligent, professional human you can ever need."

5. Batman Begins

After losing all the weight on his body for Machinist, Bale had to regain his body weight for Batman Begins screen test. In six weeks, the actor managed to do that. He had gotten back to his regular routine of eating healthy and exercising. Talking to BBC about it, he said, "My metabolism had to get back up to speed because my heart had got used to a whole different way of living for some time."

6. The Prestige

Bale was playing the role of a magician and the drama film had made him lose 55 pounds for the role. The director Christopher Nolan spoke to The New York Times about his transformation and said, "I remember Christian was worried because he was meeting to play a superhero, But I came away from it feeling I'd never seen such focus and dedication from an actor." After reading the script of the film, Bale had immediately accepted the role. 

7. The Fighter 

Bale had won an Oscar for the best supporting role for his performance in this film. He played the role of Dicky Eklund who was a promising boxer but turned into a drug addict and then an ex-con trainer. He spoke to MTV about his role saying, "I have no goal of seeing if I can become invisible one day, eat so little that I disappear, I didn't take this job because I went, 'Oh, there's a physical transformation needed.' I always go, 'Damn! There's a physical transformation needed! Again, I just didn't recognize that. I just liked the character and then realized, 'Oh, crap, he's a welterweight.'"

8. Vice 

Bale looked almost unrecognizable in this film. He had put on a lot of weight and had a buzz cut. He explained his look to CBS News, "It wasn't just for fun I decided to shave my head, bleach my eyebrows and put on 40 pounds; I was playing Mr. Dick Cheney in a film which we wrapped last week. This is a canvas by which the superb makeup artists create Cheney." He said.