Christian Bale Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Christian Bale.
Famous Quotes By Christian Bale
Putting on weight is easy all the way through. But after the first couple of weeks, the novelty wears off very quickly, and your body is groaning and starting to really shout at you, saying, 'Why? Why? Why? Why are you doing this?' — Christian Bale
If I'm not working, I really have nothing to do with it - I'm not hanging out and mixing with film people. Not that I have anything against film people; they're some of the best people around and some of the worst people around, just like in any business ... they just gesticulate a little bit more. — Christian Bale
We were incredibly fortunate to get to make three [Batman films]. That's enough. Let's not get greedy. It's a torch that should be handed from one actor to another. So I enjoy looking forward to what somebody else will come up with. — Christian Bale
I'm not really looking forward to wearing a black rubber suit in the summertime in humid Chicago. If you see a pool of sweat through the city, follow it and you will find me. — Christian Bale
When it comes to films, people often don't differentiate between the message of a bad central character and the message of the film itself. They are two separate things. — Christian Bale
So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor. — Christian Bale
In everyday life, my wife is the most wonderful. We're in love with each other beyond belief. — Christian Bale
There have been many times when you spend a number of months and the finished product is not what you wanted to see. And 'Batman Begins' was what I wanted to see. — Christian Bale
I want to be able to just act and never do any interview, but I don't have the balls to stand up to the studio and say, "I'm never doing another interview in my life!" — Christian Bale
Sometimes the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people have got to have their faith rewarded. — Christian Bale
I always leave that for other people to decide, because some of the things I consider to be disasters are some people's favorite movies. And that's what I like so much, is that you never know. Something intrigues somebody and means nothing to somebody else. — Christian Bale
I feel like I'm pretty good but I don't like to toot my own horn, you know. I want to let the work speak for itself and kind of move on to the next thing. — Christian Bale
Planning a career, I always find that such a tricky thing, because I don't have much of a plan, really. — Christian Bale
I have this theory that, depending on your attitude, your life doesn't have to become this ridiculous charade that it seems so many people end up living. — Christian Bale
What I like about it is that I'm not somebody who's in movies. I'm a guy who's not very good going around the track with a bunch of guys who are a hell of a lot better. — Christian Bale
It's the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience. — Christian Bale
If you're smart you're just gonna be all about the work. But as a young person, you want to going out to clubs and doing all the stuff. I'm just glad I survived it. — Christian Bale
I've had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I'm trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don't want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that. — Christian Bale
You say something bad about Newsies and you have an awful lot of people to answer to. — Christian Bale
I certainly liked performing [Patrick Bateman], but it was because he thinks he's so [bloody] cool and just the [stuff], but is really such a cheesy dork. — Christian Bale
All of the muscles were gone, so that was a real tough time of rebuilding all of that. But you have a deadline, you have an obligation. You've said that you will commit to this part, and I just can't live with myself for not really giving it as much as I can. — Christian Bale
I think there's a limited amount of planning you can do, at least in the position I'm in. Maybe more successful actors can plan more than I'm able to. — Christian Bale
What the hell kind of man decides to dress up as a bat and run around the city? There's got to be something a little bit loose in there. — Christian Bale
I put on weight like Santa Claus. I just get this belly that kind of extends out. — Christian Bale
I do like taking stuff seriously that a lot of people look at as nonsense. I enjoy the insanity of that. And I like the commitment that is needed for that. — Christian Bale
Whatever you do, do it completely. Don't do it half-arsed. Do it more than anybody else would. — Christian Bale
Any planning that I have in my career is totally accidental really. — Christian Bale
I think mostly it's the adventure that I will have in making the movie. That's what I look for. — Christian Bale
I will never say never, but I will say never to doing the more typical romantic comedies. You know, unless I'm getting audited and I'm on the street and I desperately need some dough and that's the only thing that I'm getting. — Christian Bale
I like the idea of movies having a magic element. How many times have you seen an actor in a movie who you know only as the character? It's wonderful, isn't it? — Christian Bale
An actor should never be larger than the film he's in. — Christian Bale
I seek ... the means to fight injustice. To turn fear against those who prey on the fearful. — Christian Bale
If something's true and sincere, it happens regardless of marketing. The more I talk about it, the more I'm telling people how they should react. And that is an asshole. — Christian Bale
I don't think I was particularly in need of superheroes. I never had any fascination with Superman or Spider-Man or a Batman kind of character. If it happened at all, it was imagined characters that I had invented. My dad was a role model for me. He was a fascinating man. There was intrigue and entertainment growing up with him. He gave me an edict that I still pursue: Life should never be boring. — Christian Bale
In terms of the romantic kind of lead, I just never enjoy those movies very much. Maybe they'll come to interest me more as I get older. I doubt it, but maybe. Romantic comedies tend to be, for me, an oxymoron. — Christian Bale
It's very easy to leave when things go wrong, but to stick around and to basically give life to a town because of everything that it gave you generation after generation after generation, that to me is what defines a true American. — Christian Bale
The only thing that I'm obsessed with is sleeping, and actually, it is more than an obsession, it is a pleasure. — Christian Bale
I'd love to remain a secret and still work, but I also want people to see the movies I'm in and get a higher profile because of that. I like to think that as long as you continue choosing diverse roles, you can avoid becoming predictable. — Christian Bale
A teenager usually wants to try to get people to notice him in some way, to feel like someone gives a damn. Me, all that attention, I just wanted to fade into the background. Be invisible. Disappear. — Christian Bale
I start from scratch with each movie; I wipe the slate and I certainly don't rely on some bag of acting tricks I've amassed over the years. — Christian Bale
'3:10 to Yuma' was one that I just kept on talking and thinking about after reading it. And I think the reason is because, like in most Westerns, you have the very clear-cut bad-guy/good-guy, however, as the movie progresses, you kind of see that it's a very fine line that divides these two. — Christian Bale
It's got to do with putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing how far you can come to truly understand them. I like the empathy that comes from acting. — Christian Bale
I met my grandfather just before he died, and it was the first time that I had seen Dad with a relative of his. It was interesting to see my own father as a son and the body language and alteration in attitude that comes with that, and it sort of changed our relationship for the better. — Christian Bale
I'm sure you find it fascinating. It's always interesting for everybody to look at people who've been pushed to the brink. You wonder how you would fare with that. Nobody's interested in somebody who doesn't ever really do anything. I don't have a choice in that. I will always go for those kinds of characters. Each one is a separate choice for me, but I think it's fairly natural to find yourself gravitating towards people who have done extraordinary things. — Christian Bale
I started my career without fans. — Christian Bale
I'm not really into musicals. — Christian Bale
Dieter Dengler was an amazing man. Who knows what he would've been had he not ever been tested in this way? It's a question that I certainly have myself. What would I be able to do in certain situations? He came out, obviously, looking like a true hero, but he didn't go in looking like that. He was not your typical image of somebody that you would think would be the tough guy who was able to endure. His lighthearted attitude, this sort of dorkiness, and naivete; it ended up being the finest tool for his survival. — Christian Bale
You get those occasional moments when you're absolutely calm, and you've just done something that would have scared you shitless earlier that day, and you've just done it like it was nothing. I find that very relaxing. — Christian Bale
The point of having a director is that they make the final decision; it's their point of view, they set the rhythm and they make the final decisions. — Christian Bale
Certainly I have no attraction to misery. I don't intentionally go for dark. — Christian Bale
We are starting off with our own different characters and our own laws and everything, looking at Bruce Wayne and how he came to be the person that he was and how he comes to be this man that jumps around in the Bat suit. — Christian Bale
A lot of actors say that theater's the thing for them. And that's great, and I'm not one to speak with any authority about it because of not having done it properly. For me, movies are what I love. — Christian Bale
'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it. — Christian Bale
I ain't the first on the list that people are sending scripts to. I'm very lucky. I've managed to put myself in the position with some directors, who will be calling me directly, and we're working on things and talking about things, but that's on a purely creative level. — Christian Bale
I don't want to know about the lives of other actors and I don't want people to know too much about me. If we don't know about the private lives of other actors, that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters. That's the point, they can create these other characters and I can believe them. — Christian Bale
It's not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me. — Christian Bale
Working out is incredibly boring. I swear it's true that the bigger your muscles get, the fewer brain cells you have. — Christian Bale
I tend to think you're fearless when you recognize why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway. — Christian Bale
I'll find myself having dinner with people and someone will mention something and I will say I was in that situation once. Then I'll say, forget it, it was a scene I was in. That can get to be quite confusing. — Christian Bale
You're creating a different world and the actor's job is to be able to convince the audience to enter into that world, whether it be actually something that you recognize from your own life or not. — Christian Bale
I don't think I'm like any of the characters I've played - they're all really far from who I am. — Christian Bale
I'm not an actor that tends to care. I don't ask 'Is this a close up? Is this a master? Is this a wide? What are you doing? If I look up and notice the camera I go 'Oh, it's a big one today, must be an IMAX.' And that's kinda it for me because it doesn't affect what I'm doing. — Christian Bale
Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise. — Christian Bale
A movie star is someone people look at and go, 'I want to be like that person'. There's the responsibility of desire. It's not something I'm interested in trying. I would fail miserably at it, so why even bother? — Christian Bale
I'm English. Our dentistry is not world famous. — Christian Bale
Nuclear apocalypse - who do you need? Actors are probably not top of the list. What can I do for you? I can pretend to be somebody who can grow you some nice crops. — Christian Bale
I never, in any city I've ever been in, never remember the names of streets. The longest place I ever lived in was for five years and I didn't know the name of the next street over. — Christian Bale
How serious can a movie about time-traveling robots be? You want it to be cool and fun. — Christian Bale
Basically, it's somebody who got stuck having to interview me who really wants to be a novelist, so they're writing these novellas and I was like, "It's not true, that didn't happen, they just made all that up! Why don't they just go ahead and be a novelist instead of bothering with interviewing me?" — Christian Bale
I know a lot of other actors that don't like to look at other references to their characters and things. But I like it. I always look at everything, I read all the books. I read Dieter's "Escape from Laos." I watched the documentary again and again and again. I recorded it just to listen to him a lot. I just don't suffer from feeling like I'm getting caught into an imitation. I just feel like I want to steal some good stuff if it's in there. — Christian Bale
The only thing I would unequivocally say is that I have never had any interest in romantic comedy I just couldn't do it. I think I'd be terrible. — Christian Bale
I have a very sissy job, where I go to work and get my hair done, and people do my makeup, and I go and say lines and people spoil me rotten. And everyone has that kind of curiosity of how far can you go, how far can you take it. I think it's always good testing yourself. — Christian Bale
I never want to feel that I'm playing it safe. — Christian Bale
When you do a lot of interviews, you find yourself telling the same stories over and over. After you do it for a whole day, you say, 'Christ, I've said this five times today.' It gets fun when you get so bored you start making it all up. — Christian Bale
And I not only inherited an aversion to the nine-to-five routine, but the sense from my parents that being bored and boring is the worst thing that you can be. — Christian Bale
I quite like it when you're working with people and you only get to know them through the scenes that you're doing together. — Christian Bale
And being as I'm somebody who loves movies like The Machinist, I also love going along to big mass entertainment movies. I get in the mood for all kinds of movies, and so I like to try each of them. — Christian Bale
There are movies where actors aren't characters but movie stars, being cool beyond belief throughout the whole movie. That is what it is. And we reveal ourselves when we act, very often without noticing. But if I can manage to do a character without showing anything of myself, then that's the ultimate goal for me. No leakage. — Christian Bale
No, only disappointment in myself on those occasions I didn't manage to rise to the occasion as I felt I should've done. I can always see how to do it, and then the challenge is, Can I manage that each and every day? — Christian Bale
You have to treat yourself like a mushroom to some degree, in order to keep on discovering things. — Christian Bale
It helps so much being on location. It's like the difference between performing for the rectangle of the camera versus a world being created and then the camera finds things within that. There's a huge difference in that, because what it takes away is performance. You don't feel like performing. You're just kind of doing it. You're existing. — Christian Bale
I never want to turn something down because I'm afraid to do it, because of some idea of image or whatever. That was never anything I set out to do. In fact, the opposite, I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make. — Christian Bale
I've always believed that the director does whatever the hell he wants. That's what you sign on for as an actor - I can't stand it when you have actors who are trying to leverage directors into doing things they don't want to do. — Christian Bale
I find what I do for a living really funny. I mean, acting is kind of a hilarious thing for a grown man to call a job. — Christian Bale
Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set. — Christian Bale
Everyone always tells you that you're the only one that can do this or that role right, and if you say no, they go to somebody else and tell them that they're the only one that can do it right. But when they're talking to you, you're always the 'Best Actor of Your Generation.' — Christian Bale
I want to do good work. I want the opportunity to work with good people, and the only way I'm gonna do that is to commit 110% - you get out what you put in. — Christian Bale
All I've ever ended up with in terms of achievements is the movie, some really stupid anecdotes, a bunch of crosswords that I didn't finish and maybe some old bicycle that I found lying around on set. — Christian Bale
I mean, first of all, let me say whichever superhero first came up with the idea of wearing a cape, he wasn't really onto anything good. The number of times I'm treading on that damn thing or I throw a punch and it ends up covering my whole head. It's really not practical. — Christian Bale
I'm an actor I'm not a politician. I always kick myself when I talk too much about family, or personal things. — Christian Bale
It was just the two of us, inside there with just mirrors, all the way around us. Everywhere we looked, there were these two freaks, sitting at a table, eyeballing each other — Christian Bale
I think trying too hard to be sexy is the worst thing in the world a woman can do. — Christian Bale
I tend to stay in character between scenes ... to be rather serious on set, but here's why, and I think people will find it surprising. I'm one of the worst 'corpses' on a movie set, which means you can't keep a straight face. You start to get the giggles and you can't stop. — Christian Bale
There was a great complexity to my father. He was a devoted family man. But, in the same breath, he simply was not suited to an anchored life. He should have been somebody who had a backpack, an old map, a bit of change in his pocket and that was it - roaming the world. — Christian Bale
I chose to tell a personal story. When you tell a movie like this that's as emotionally charged as this is, it's a risk. As one of my great cinematic heroes, Francis Coppola, would say, "If you aren't taking the highest, greatest risk, then why are you a filmmaker?" — Christian Bale
There's a level of confidence in the actor you're working with that really helps a lot. It makes all the difference. — Christian Bale
The interesting thing about a movie is the movie. — Christian Bale