Christian Bale

An actor who takes uncommon risks and is capable of stark emotional and physical transformations, Christian Bale (birthname: Christian Charles Philip Bale) has built a unique, wide-ranging if controversial career over 35 years. From his true feature film debut as a lad surviving World War II in Steven Spielberg’s version of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1987), Bale has been an actor who commands the viewer’s attention. The rare natural actor, untrained, purely instinctual, and raw, prone to unpredictable reactions that resist formulaic behavior, Bale can be said to be his generation’s definitive example of a lead actor with a character actor’s mentality. 

That amazing debut as young Jim in Empire of the Sun was an ironic triumph for Christian Bale, who had been somewhat reluctant to become an actor at a young age. Nevertheless, he found himself at age 15 acting under Kenneth Branagh’s direction in Henry V (1989), with Paul Scofield, Emma Thompson, Derek Jacobi, and Ian Holm.

At 18, Bale had his first starring role in the cult hit Disney musical, Newsies (1992), with Bill Pullman, Ann-Margret, and Robert Duvall. Bale co-starred with Robert Sean Leonard and Frank Whaley in the Hitler youth drama, Swing Kids (1993), followed by Gabriel Axel’s interesting but underseen Hamlet origin story drama, Royal Deceit (1994), in which Bale played the role of Amled, the character upon which Shakespeare’s Hamlet was based, opposite Gabriel Byrne, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, and Kate Beckinsale.

Bale rejoined Byrne again as one of the few male roles in Gillian Armstrong’s version of Little Women (1994), with Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Claire Danes, and Susan Sarandon. Bale’s second Disney project in three years was a part of the voice cast of Pocahontas (1995). Bale continued to display his remarkable range—particularly in period films—and keen script sense with Jane Campion’s fine version of Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady (1996), with Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich, Barbara Hershey, Mary-Louise Parker, and Viggo Mortensen.

This was on display again in Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1996), with Bob Hoskins, Gérard Depardieu, and Patricia Arquette, contrasted with his foray into the glam rock in Todd Haynes’s superb Velvet Goldmine (1998), with Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Toni Collette. 

Christian Bale’s image as an actor specializing in classical and period work took a stark left turn with Mary Harron’s bold American Psycho, based on Bret Easton Ellis’s novel and co-starring Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, and Reese Witherspoon, which developed a long-lasting cult status. Bale jumped into genre work with John Singleton’s remake of Shaft (2000), with Samuel L. Jackson, Vanessa Williams, and Jeffrey Wright, switching gears (again) to romantic drama with Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001), with Nicolas Cage, Penélope Cruz, John Hurt, and Irene Papas, and yet again to contemporary Los Angeles in Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon (2002), with Kate Beckinsale and Frances McDormand.

One of his most famed roles—due to his extreme weight loss—was as Trevor Reznik in Brad Anderson’s stark thriller, The Machinist (2004), once again demonstrating Bale’s brave artistic choices. The years 2005 to 2013 were especially notable for Christian Bale, during which he played Bruce Wayne/Batman in Christopher Nolan’s phenomenally successful trilogy re-imagining the Batman universe in Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), with the late Heath Ledger, and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), with Tom Hardy, Morgan Freeman, Marion Cotillard, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, and Michael Caine. The trilogy’s combined worldwide gross totaled $2.4 billion, easily the greatest box office number of any movie with Christian Bale as a star.

In between these three, Bale worked with directors Terrence Malick (The New World in 2005), Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn in 2006), Nolan in non-Batman mode (The Prestige in 2006), James Mangold’s remake of Elmore Leonard’s western (3:10 to Yuma in 2007), Todd Haynes (the Bob Dylan portrait, I’m Not There, in 2007), Michael Mann (Public Enemies in 2009), David O. Russell (The Fighter in 2010 and American Hustle in 2013), Zhang Yimou (The Flowers of War in 2011), and Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace in 2013. 

Christian Bale has become a favorite of some of the most distinctive American writer-directors, playing a wide range of roles in the movies of Terrence Malick (The Hollywood reverie Knight of Cups in 2015, and the music industry movie, Song to Song in 2017, although his scenes were subsequently deleted); of David O. Russell (not only the rollicking comedy, American Hustle, but also the drama, Amsterdam (2022), with the all-star cast of Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Robert De Niro, Zoe Saldana, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Michael Shannon, and Timothy Olyphant).

Adam McKay (his ripped-from-headlines comedy-dramas The Big Short in 2014, and Vice in 2018, in which Bale fashioned a stunning portrayal of Dick Cheney); James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, and the wildly entertaining racecar drama, Ford v Ferrari, in 2019); of Scott Cooper (after Out of the Furnace, Bale starred in Cooper’s fine 2017 Western, Hostiles, and his upcoming Netflix movie, The Pale Blue Eye, about Edgar Allen Poe at West Point, with Harry Melling, Gillian Anderson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Robert Duvall, and Timothy Spall).

Bale jumped into the MCU in 2022 with the fearsome character, Gorr the God Butcher, in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder, with Chris Pratt, Matt Damon, Natalie Portman, and Karen Gillan.