2005’s Batman Begins was a great triumph for the franchise that stumbled with 1997’s Batman & Robin, a return to the campy style of the series. Christian Bale was perfectly cast as Bruce Wayne. Bale has time and time again proved himself to be extremely committed to his roles, even dropping all his body weight for the sake of his role in The Machinist.
While Bale is insanely dedicated to his roles, he is also only human. Having to lose about 40 pounds in muscle mass and going through intense training to play the character of Batman, it is only sane to expect that the actor might be extremely tired. This led to a hilarious situation, that might have irritated Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine (Lucious Fox and Alfred Pennyworth respectively) a little.
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The Batman Begins actor fell asleep during a scene in the film
Speaking to Uproxx, Bale talked about his time on the Batman set. He remembered all the shenanigans, also the time when he fell asleep during a scene. The actor recalled:
“In the scene, I was meant to be waking up, so I laid down and just fell asleep. And I didn’t hear ‘action.’ So, Michael and Morgan were talking, and I was supposed to join in. I woke up with Michael Caine poking me in the ribs and going, ‘Look at that! He’s bloody fallen asleep, hasn’t he? He’s bloody fallen asleep!'”
While this must have been quite hilarious at the time, one can assume that the senior actors in the room were altogether amused and irritated at the same time. It is often forgotten what a grueling task acting can be. Given how much mental and emotional (and more often than not, physical) effort goes into the profession, it must get exhausting, leading to little goof-ups in big productions like Batman Begins.
Batman Begins came at the end of a long effort to reboot Batman
Batman: Darknight was the work of writing duo Lee Shapiro and Stephen Wise, who had pitched their script to then WB Executive Tom Lassaly. The pitch was well-liked, and a script was further developed over the course of 3 months.
The story would follow George Clooney’s version of the character, now retired, rescuing a college-going Dick Grayson from Scarecrow. The film was also to include Man-Bat. However, this entire story was scrapped as WB favored a complete reboot. This resulted in 2005’s Batman Begins and established the greatest Batman trilogy we have received to date.
