Christian Bale is a firm believer in one man’s trash being another man’s treasure.
It’s no secret that the film industry runs largely on competition. Sure, talent recognizes talent, but there are sundry things running behind the scenes that determine which actor gets what role. Sometimes though, it’s a matter of sheer luck. But too often, if not always, it’s about bagging a gig that someone else denied at first. In fact, most of the actors who’ve portrayed a popular character in a film that ended up getting immortalised as iconic, wouldn’t even have gotten the role if someone else wouldn’t have rejected it in the first place. You see the obvious pattern here?
Well, that’s exactly what happened with The Dark Knight star too. But even after reportedly losing more than five big-studio roles to Academy Award-winner Leonardo DiCaprio, Bale was still never crestfallen about it. If anything, The Prestige star was oddly relieved and immensely grateful to DiCaprio for taking over projects that could’ve had the former’s name on them instead.
Christian Bale on Losing Numerous Roles to Leonardo DiCaprio
Christian Bale has had a lengthy and flourishing acting career in Hollywood, with his first major role dating back to when he was merely 13 years old. Over the years, he has starred in some of the most renowned films including Christopher Nolan’s famous The Dark Knight Trilogy, 2000’s sensational American Psycho, David O. Russell’s sports drama, The Fight, and the Winona Ryder-led romance titled Little Women.
Despite all of the success and stardom, however, Bale, 49, has had plenty of roles snatched from him by none other than the The Wolf of Wall Street star, Leonardo DiCaprio. Roles that could’ve made him a pretty figure of millions if the latter wouldn’t have gotten them instead. But it looks like the English actor never really held that against DiCaprio.
Speaking to GQ about the same, Bale remarked how every film that any actor landed was probably thanks to DiCaprio turning it down to begin with. The Amsterdam star also mentioned how all the directors he’d collaborated with on more than one occasion had “offered every one of those roles to him [DiCaprio] first.”
“Look, to this day, any role that anybody gets, it’s only because he’s passed on it beforehand. It doesn’t matter what anyone tells you. It doesn’t matter how friendly you are with the directors. All those people that I’ve worked with multiple times, they all offered every one of those roles to him first. Right? I had one of those people actually tell me that. So, thank you, Leo, because literally, he gets to choose everything he does. And good for him, he’s phenomenal.”
Not only is Bale unbothered about The Revenant star getting so many of his roles, but he’s even grateful to him for that!
Christian Bale Was Thankful that Leonardo DiCaprio Got Titanic Instead of Him
Amongst the horde of candidates that James Cameron had considered for his blockbuster hit, Titanic, Christian Bale had been one of them. He’d even auditioned for Jack Dawson’s role in the film before DiCaprio ended up starring in the billion-dollar project instead.
Bale has probably lost various such opportunities to the Inception star in the past. But the American Hustle star only ever took it in stride. He was even pleased about it, claiming how he wouldn’t want the kind of “exposure” DiCaprio got with all those films either.
“Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing? I mean, I can’t do what he does. I wouldn’t want the exposure that he has either. And he does it magnificently. But I would suspect that almost everybody of similar age to him in Hollywood owes their careers to him passing on whatever project it is.”
Well, he’s probably right about that one.
Titanic can be streamed on Disney+.
Source: GQ
