The Body Bale
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 11:23AM The good folks over at /Film published this neat infographic on Christian Bale's body created by /Film reader Matt Ellerbrock.
The weight information is priceless but there's something very wrong with the chart: Bale is wearing clothes in half the photos. Plus there's no American Psycho (2000). No overview of The Body Bale, in sickness and in health, is complete without it.
American Psycho (2000). lbs: Oh, like it matters.
You're welcome.
When Bale wins the Supporting Actor Oscar on February 27th, do you think he'll finally stop this dangerous yoyo'ing for art? Normally we're all for suffering for your art but Bale takes it so far it's more like torture for art's sake which is way less glamorous than traditional respectable "suffering". Bale will return to buff form for one last go at Batman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012) but as of right now he's filming Zhang Yimou's The 13 Women of Nanjing (2011). We'd like to say that he's already in peak shape again but since he's playing a war refugee struggling heroically to save schoolchildren we suspect the weight loss continues. Nevertheless we're excited for the film since Zhang Yimou makes frequently excellent movies .
Batman, Christian Bale, The Body, The Flowers of War
Reader Comments (12)
And this is why I love him as an actor. He's willing to nearly kill himself from massive weight loss for the sake of believability.
I would've actually loved to see him with some clothes on in that Machinist photo :) too creepy.
he looks best in that Reign of Fire... late 20s: best age for a goodlooking man. imo. :P
but come on Nathaniel, some analysis on the Makeup finalists and the ASC :D
Sorry to say, but after watching Conviction, I don't know how Sam Rockwell can go from a front-runner to.....to nothing. People kept saying the movie is terrible, but it's not unwatchable. Maybe I'm just in one of those moods, but I took comfort in a paint-by-numbers movie with superior acting from everyone (yes, including HIlary Swank, who would get nominated for an Oscar in a leaner year). Yes, the treatment of the subject is a bit unimaginative (comparing to true story of the Fighter for example), but it moves along well without any fuss or pretentiousness........so to get back to my original point, I hope Sam Rockwell will get a nom, but for me, him and Geoffrey Rush gave the best supporting perfs this year. There's nothing left in the fighter cuz Bale chewed every scenery (and Leo too) in the movie....lol
They forgot Laurel Canyon., which he has less ab/muscular definition and he has like 4% body fat but hot nonetheless.
Never mind that a lot of critics are unwilling to assign more than one lead per gender and have, for a while, been unwilling to call someone a lead if they're a minor. (Goes back, I think, at least to Paper Moon.)
Ha! I thought the same thing (re: American Psycho). There's an entire scene (scenes?) devoted to Patrick Bateman's fitness regimen; how could you not include *that* Bale in the lineup?
The Machinist still gives me 'Seven'-esque nightmares. :-/
Zhang Yimou makes frequently excellent movies.
I concur with this statement.
When Bale wins the Supporting Actor Oscar on February 27th
You’re presuming a lot. He went off on a below the line person. Below the line people hate jerky actors. Bale better thank God that the Academy no longer allows extras to vote. Three-time Best Supporting Actor winner and openly racist Walter Brennan is responsible for the change; not because he won almost every time he was nominated 3-4 but because he believed extras didn’t deserve the privilege.
I could never bring myself to watch "The Machinist." That weight loss is ridiculous. I was this close to not watching "The Fighter" b/c of that too. But I did, and Christian Bale was incredible, so I guess it was worth it in the end. But getting validation like that will only encourage him to do more of those "extreme" roles and compromise his health. Sad really, but that's a method actor for you.
/3RTFULL --- its presumptuous sure. If Geoffrey Rush hadn't already won i'd worry for him but fact: people let movie stars get away with all sorts of bad behavior. And Christian Bale is a movie star AND the performance is excellent. I don't think he'll have trouble winning.
Christian Bale generally goes too far with his acting as well as the insane weight changes. He is often not believeable to me, like as Batman - a false surface portrayal of some idea of the character. After American Psycho he was interviewed on Fresh Air on NPR and he had an American accent. Terri Gross asked him about it and he didn't have a very good answer. Or drop back to his real accent. I heard an interview about The Fighter and he had a big Bahston accent!
He was good in American Psycho. Probably because he was portraying a psycho control freak.
His weight loss is extreme. On the other side of the coin, I would say Matt Damon gains weight in for a handful of films. (Although he did lose significant weight when he wasn’t famous yet, for Courage Under Fire).