CHRISTIAN BALE has mastered the art of the body transformation. He’s gained weight, lost weight, packed on muscle, shaved his head and even done special exercises to thicken his neck, all because a script has called for it.
Bale’s physical and mental commitment to his roles has made him one of the most acclaimed actors in Hollywood, with a reputation for getting very method. From getting shredded to play serial killer Patrick Bateman to loading up on calories for a role as the more rotund Dick Cheney, Bale has proven time and again that he can morph into any character.
His chameleonic approach has helped immortalise him in cinematic folklore. And now, after 25 years on the transformation rollercoaster, Bale remains one of the industry’s most sought-after leading men. Although, he is starting to put his health first. “I can’t keep doing it. I really can’t,” Bale told the Sunday Times. “My mortality is staring me in the face.”
Now that Bale’s transformation days appear to be over, we’re revisiting his most memorable makeovers.
American Psycho (2000)
Prior to his iconic role as the psychopathic Patrick Bateman, Bale had actually never stepped foot in a gym. But in a tightly contested casting battle, Bale was determined to beat Leonardo DiCaprio for the role, so he began training relentlessly.
“After every day he would go work out for hours and hours and hours to get into that incredible shape,” Matt Ross, who played Bateman’s colleague Luis Carruthers, has said. Bale’s diet was similarly strict. He told Train Mag that “there were no cheat meals. It was all lean protein. No sugars, good fats and low carbs.”
While Bale’s impressive physique ultimately helped him get the role, it was also central to the character. “With Patrick Bateman, his physicality is much more important than with most characters,” he told The Guardian. “He deals totally in the superficial, and he’s incredibly narcissistic.”
The Machinist (2004)
To play an emaciated insomniac, Bale went through of the most dramatic (and medically concerning) transformations in cinematic history. Bale deployed a brutal black coffee fast on a diet of one apple and a tin of tuna per day. He also smoked plenty of cigarettes to curb hunger pangs.
By the time filming wrapped, Bale weighed just 54kg, but he reportedly wanted to lose even more weight. The film’s producers wouldn’t let him, as they had become concerned for his health.
Batman Begins (2005)
After losing a dangerous amount of weight for The Machinist, Bale began bulking up for his first turn as Batman. His new diet included a lot of pizza and ice cream, helping him tip the scales at 84kg, gaining 30kg in just six months.
“I overdid it because I was enjoying gorging. I was ignoring advice about taking it slowly because my stomach had shrunk, and I should just go with soups…I was straight into pizza and ice-cream and eating five meals in a sitting,” he explained.
When Bale returned to the role for 2008’s The Dark Knight Rises, he took a more balanced approach to his diet. “My whole thing was about having speed, strength, stamina and agility – being lean would be counterproductive to some of those things – I want a bit more weight there. Batman relies on speed and strategy. Diet-wise I would eat smaller meals every two or three hours. Each meal I would aim for a balance of lean proteins, carbs and good, healthy fats,” he told Train Mag.
Rescue Dawn (2006)
This is when Bale’s weight really started to yo-yo. To play a POW during the Vietnam war, Bale lost his bulky frame and shed 25kg. He would go on to gain it all back for The Dark Knight two years later.
The Fighter (2010)
In one of his healthier transformations, Bale whittled down to 65kg to portray a professional boxer and recovering drug addict in The Fighter – a role that saw him win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. This time, he focused less on diet and more on exercise. “I was just running like crazy. I could just run for hours on end and I felt really healthy,” he said.
American Hustle (2013)
Bale would regain around 20kg to play con artist Irving Rosenfeld in American Hustle. As he told People, he “ate lots of doughnuts, a whole lot of cheeseburgers and whatever I could get my hands on. I literally ate anything that came my way. I was about [84kg] and went up to [103kg].”
Vice (2018)
After returning to a more regular bodyweight in the years following American Hustle, Bale put the weight back on to play portly former US Vice President Dick Cheney. To pull off the transformation, Bale “ate a lot of pies,” shaved his head and bleached his eyebrows. He also did some “specific exercises” to thicken his neck.
Ford v Ferrari (2019)
As you’re doubtlessly aware of by now, Bale tends to go up and down with his weight. So, after gaining weight for Vice, he lost it all again in order to play race car driver Ken Miles. This time, however, he had to lose weight not only for appearances, but because he “had to get in the car. These things are not made for comfort, these cars. They’re tight. So, I couldn’t bloody get in them,” he told Variety.
Matt Damon, who co-stars in the film, was amazed by Bale’s weight loss, but wasn’ too keen on replicating his methods. “He just looked at me and said ‘I didn’t eat.’ That guy is cut from a different cloth.”
Thor: Love & Thunder (2022)
By 2022, Bale had finally realised that putting his body through such arduous transformations wasn’t sustainable. Working on a short timeframe, Bale decided that it wasn’t necessary to buff up to play the villainous Gorr. “I was already quite skinny for the film that I’d made before. So we looked at the comic book character that was very muscular, and I said, ‘well, it just can’t happen, so we have to look at his supernatural powers instead,’” he told Cinema Blend. “And also, how can you compete with Chris [Hemsworth] in terms of muscles? No matter how much I would have worked out it would have looked pitiful by comparison.”
