Christian Bale Questioned if Christopher Nolan Believed He Could Play Anything Else Other Than Batman
Christian Bale struck up quite the partnership with Christopher Nolan thanks to his role as Batman in The Dark Knight trilogy. But there was a brief moment when Bale wondered if Nolan only saw him as Bruce Wayne.
Christian Bale thought he could be stuck playing Batman
The world first saw Bale don the Batsuit in the Nolan film Batman Begins. Nolan and Bale’s take on Batman was successful enough to spawn two more sequels which both earned over $1 billion at the box office.
In a recent interview with GQ, Bale opened up about how fond he was of the character. Even if being Batman for too long carried the slight possibility of being typecast.
“I loved that because I was like, ‘This could be it. I could never be anything but that.’ And for a lot of people, I won’t,” Bale said. “I was like, ‘Ah, maybe I’m going to be forced to go do something different.’ And maybe this f***ing thing [acting] that I got forced into doing as a kid that I didn’t f***ing want to do in the first place, I’m out. And I’m free. And then it didn’t happen.”
Christian Bale once questioned if Christopher Nolan could see him play other roles instead of Batman
The Batman movies weren’t the only films Bale and Nolan collaborated on. In 2006, Bale and Nolan took a break from the superhero features to focus on The Prestige. Prestige was a story about two rival magicians played by Bale and Hugh Jackman. It’s largely considered one of Nolan’s most memorable films.
In a resurfaced interview with Paul Fischer, Bale revealed that Nolan initially didn’t offer him The Prestige role. Instead, Bale sought it out himself.
“Chris didn’t actually come to me with this. I actually read the script and I called him up and said, ‘I want in. I like Borden. I can really nail this character,'” Bale said. “You know, the question was could he see me as anything other than Bruce Wayne?”
But it took little convincing from Bale to be a part of The Prestige. Which showed Nolan had full faith in Bale’s acting abilities.
“[Christopher Nolan] said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ I do think he’s one of the best around and I think you’re in bloody good hands. It’s nice to work with someone a number of times. You do get a nice little short hand between you and you can really hit the ground running much quicker. Chris was doing a ship shaping kind of thing in terms of his directing styles between the two movies,” Bale added.
What Christian Bale did to combat being typecast as Batman
Even when Bale first picked up Batman’s cape and cowl, he wasn’t too concerned with being trapped by his Batman character. Bale took steps to ensure typecasting wouldn’t be a possibility by taking on a large variety of roles.
“I wasn’t worried about that because my feeling has always been with anything like that it all depends on the following roles I take and just ability as well you know,” Bale said. “If it turns out that you know what I’m just doing different variations of Bruce Wayne for the rest of my life than you know what, who would want to [hire me] for anything? So I wasn’t that worried about that.”
The Oscar-winner believed that the unique way he and Nolan tackled Batman would also make being typecast less likely.
“Although he’s obviously larger than life, obviously we were referencing many of the graphic novels, it’s somewhat in my mind less of a character than he was represented in many of the other versions. I kind of watch it and believe him as a real character in this sort ridiculous animated personality. So I think that, again, I was able to kind of stay under the radar a little bit more,” he added.
