{"id":1084858,"date":"2026-07-12T16:13:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T16:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1084858\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T16:13:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T16:13:21","slug":"the-typo-that-pushed-christian-bales-acting-to-the-extreme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1084858\/","title":{"rendered":"The typo that pushed Christian Bale’s acting to the extreme"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Christian<\/p>\n

Credit: Alamy<\/p>\n

Sun 12 July 2026 13:30, UK <\/p>\n

There\u2019s lots of noise in the news at the moment about weight-loss pills now that they\u2019re on the market in the UK, and while it obviously makes sense for some people, they could always go a much cheaper and easier route and just do what Christian Bale<\/a> did when he made The Machinist in 2004.<\/p>\n

OK, so technically Bale\u2019s regime of black coffee, an apple and a tin of tuna a day might be \u2018dangerous and unsustainable\u2019, but hey, it lost him 60 pounds, or about four stone for those of us that still use such measurements, and while it left him looking completely emaciated and ill, you can\u2019t argue with results like that.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

But perhaps the most surprising thing about the psychological thriller, which is actually a superb film if you haven\u2019t seen it, is that Bale didn\u2019t even need to go through that kind of physical torment in the first place if his co-star on the movie is to be believed. <\/p>\n

Apparently, according to Michael Ironside, he of Total Recall and Starship Troopers fame, the writer of The Machinist, Scott Kosar, had actually written the part of insomnia sufferer Trevor Reznick for someone much shorter than Bale, but hadn\u2019t adjusted the description of the character\u2019s weight in the script to reflect the actor being six-feet tall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As Ironside explained to HuffPost: \u201cThe writer is only about five-foot-six, and he put his own weights in. And then Chris did the film and Chris said, \u2018No, don\u2019t change the weights. I want to see if I make them.\u2019 \u2026 So those weights he writes on the bathroom wall in the film are his actual weights in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bale\u2019s weight loss for the movie was genuinely alarming. Over the course of four months, he dropped his weight from 182 to 120 pounds, and wanted to go further down to 99 pounds before the filmmakers had to step in and stop him over concerns for his health<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once the actor was done with the film, which tells the tale of a machine operator who begins to experience paranoid hallucinations after not sleeping properly for a year, he had just six weeks to try to put as much weight and muscle back on as possible, with filming due to start on Christopher Nolan\u2019s Batman Begins. <\/p>\n

Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was probably worth Bale\u2019s effort in the long run, though, because his dedicated performance attracted widespread praise, and the film made a reasonable profit at the box office on its way to becoming something of a cult favourite.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Bale started this year off with something of a disappointment as Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s The Bride! was roundly panned, but he\u2019ll be looking to bounce back with his David O Russell-directed American football biopic Madden alongside Nicolas Cage, which is due out at the end of November.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also rumoured to be involved in the long-awaited sequel to Michael Mann\u2019s 1995 thriller Heat<\/a>, which is slated to feature Leonardo DiCaprio, Stephen Graham and Adam Driver, but isn\u2019t likely to be released before 2028. Finally, he is working on a drama called The Church of Living Dangerously, which tells the story of how one of America\u2019s most respected pastors ended up as a drug runner for the Mexican cartel.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Alamy Sun 12 July 2026 13:30, UK There\u2019s lots of noise in the news at the moment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1084859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3940],"tags":[272069,7531,4080,16040,42315,77,17245,16,15],"class_list":["post-1084858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-272069","tag-batman","tag-celebrities","tag-christian-bale","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-entertainment","tag-thriller","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116907895214809833","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1084859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}