3. Christian Bale (Gor the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder)
Christian Bale as Gor the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder
Full disclosure: Christian Bale is my favorite actor except for the person at No. 1 on this list. When we wrote our oral history of his 2000 film American Psycho, we learned that he’s so in command of his performances that he can apparently sweat at will. It’s tempting to call him a chameleon, because of his ability to change appearance. But chameleons only change color, while Bale changes size, voice, body language, and whatever else it takes to lose himself entirely within a role.
He was known early in his career for his ability to dramatically change his body, gaining about 100 pounds between the skeletal lead role in 2004’s The Machinist and the imposing lead in 2005’s Batman Begins. But in recent years he’s gone for even more impressive changes, playing a prosthetic-eyed heavy metal fanatic investor-physician in 2015’s The Big Short and, perhaps most shockingly, Dick Cheney in 2018’s Vice.
He combined all of his talents in his Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actor role in 2010’s The Fighter. (He’s earned four nominations in all.) Bale really has no need to play the chalky, Nosferatu-influenced Gor the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder — he has nothing left to achieve in the field of comic-book movies, having already played the best Batman. He seems to have taken on the Gor role for the reason he seems to take on many of his roles: to prove that he can.
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