Christian Bale has been known in Hollywood to be the one with drastic transformations and changes in his roles. Starring in movies such as The Machinist and The Dark Knight, Bale is familiar with body weight changes.
Talking about his 2013 role in American Hustle, the actor went the extra mile and gained weight. This caused veteran actor Robert De Niro not to recognize Christian Bale anymore since he thought he was meeting someone new!
When Robert De Niro Wasn’t Able To Recognize Christian Bale
Starring in the 2013 movie, Christian Bale portrayed the role of Irvin Rosenfeld in American Hustle. Since his character was obese, Bale decided to once again, follow his passion for method acting and actually gain weight for his role.
Director David O. Russell invited Robert De Niro to the sets of the 2013 movie for a cameo. In an interview with Contact Music, O. Russell revealed that Robert De Niro shook hands with everyone and the veteran actor wasn’t able to recognize Christian Bale because of his body transformation!
“We wanted to do something he’d never done before. When he met the whole cast he shook their hands and said, ‘Who’s that guy?’ And I said, ‘You just met him, that’s Christian Bale’. He goes, ‘Wow, he looks so different. He looks great!’ He didn’t realize he just met him and I had to reintroduce them,”
Speaking to People, Christian Bale revealed how he gained a whopping 43 lbs for his role by eating a lot of doughnuts and cheeseburgers.
“I 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 185 and went up to 228. I’m still working it off.”
With iconic roles and some disasters along the way, Bale revealed that there’s a different side to him that likes to do what he has been forbidden from doing.
Christian Bale Has A Perverse Side That Affects His Movies
Although the actor has had a plethora of movies and projects that made Bale famous, he also has his fair share of failures. Portraying the role of John Connor in the 2009 film Terminator Salvation, Bale revealed in an interview with the Happy Sad Confused Podcast that although he had rejected the film thrice, there was a different side to him that wanted to take the role.
“There’s a perverse side to me, where people were telling me that there’s no way on God’s Earth that I should take that role, and I was thinking the same thing. But when people started verbalising that to me, I started to go, ‘Oh really? All right, well, watch this then.’ So there was a little bit of that involved in the choice.”
With Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence in the mix, American Hustle received a rating of 7.2/10 on IMDB and a whopping 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. The 2013 film is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.
