​'The Dark Knight' Voted Christian Bale's Best Movie Of All Time

Christian Bale's known for some pretty solid movie roles in his 30+ year career, but the people have now spoken, and the people believe his best work to be in The Dark Knight.

Bale's many films were ranked by people throughout the globe on Ranker, having been told: "Vote for your favorite Christian Bale movies, regardless of critic reviews or how big the role was."

And while Bale has many strong movies to his name, it's easy to see why The Dark Knight has been crowned the winner, given that many people deem Bale to be the best Batman out there - and that director Christopher Nolan has a pretty solid reputation with his back catalogue of films.

He's also long been praised for his commitment to the role of Batman, having had to bulk up quickly when he first landed the gig for the original film of the Dark Knight trilogy, Batman Begins.

Bale picked up the role shortly after filming The Machinist, in which he sported a scarily skeletal film - which he achieved through a diet of 'water, an apple and one cup of coffee per day, with the occasional whiskey', losing 62 pounds in the process.

He then had just six months to get not just back into shape, but into Batman's shape, which as you can imagine is no easy feat.

via GIPHY

With only a short amount of time to get into the caped crusader's costume, Bale took on a high-protein diet and a regime involving heavy-core, plyometrics and resistance training. Ironically, he managed to pack on a whopping 100 pounds, only for director Christopher Nolan to tell him he'd got a bit podge, ordering the actor to drop 20. Bit annoying.

But the good news is that Nolan was clearly impressed, and let Bale return for the second in the trilogy, The Dark Knight. And then again, of course, for The Dark Knight Rises.

Other films to be ranked among Bale's best include runner-up The Prestige and, in third place, American Psycho.

Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises also appeared in the top 10, alongside The Fighter, The Machinist, Equilibrium, 3:10 to Yuma and Empire of the Sun.

Topics: TV and Film, Celebrity, Christian Bale

Jess Hardiman

Jess is a journalist at LADbible who graduated from Manchester University with a degree in Film Studies, English Language and Linguistics - indecisiveness at its finest, right there. She also works for FOODbible and its sister page Seitanists, which are both a safe haven for her to channel a love for homemade pasta, fennel and everything else in between. You can contact Jess at [email protected].

@Jess_Hardiman