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.
These TV characters deserved to die. Spoilers follow, of course. Frank Underwood on House of…
These stars of the 1980s are still totally awesome — starring in major movies, earning…
Which of these images is a wax statue and which is computer generated imagery (CGI)?…
The Calgary Underground Film Festival has grown with Calgary’s reputation as a film and TV…
We've all watched classic old movies that are indisputably great, but aren't much fun. These…
Here are the 11 scariest 1970s horror movies. What a great decade for horror —…