Christian Bale gave simple three-word answer after Matt Damon asked how he lost 30kg for Ford v Ferrari

While Christian Bale is well-known for giving incredible, varying, Oscar-worthy performances it’s fair to say he’s also earned much recognition for his transformations.

Of course, his most extreme has to have been for his role as Trevor Reznik in 2004’s The Machinist when he dropped down from 78.5kg to just 49.9kg.

That’s quite the opposite to when he played VP Dick Cheney in 2018’s Vice, a character he gained 18.1kg for. However, when it came to his next role in Ford v Ferrari, he needed to reverse things.

And when co-star Matt Damon asked him how he lost 30kg for the 2019 sports drama film, Bale gave a simple three-word answer.

Part of the reason why the 51-year-old went about this transformation was literally down to the race cars themselves.

"I had to get in the car. I could not bloody–these things are not made for comfort, these cars. They’re tight. So, I couldn’t bloody get in them," he told Variety.

"That would have been a whole different film. These cars are not made for large men."

Bale needed to get into the cars. (20th Century Fox)

So, as Damon explained, Bale had to take some pretty drastic measures to make it work.

“[Bale] was coming off Vice, and from the time we decided to do the movie to the time we started shooting, he dropped 70 pounds,” he told Men’s Journal.

“The first day on the set, I asked him: 'How did you do that?' I’ve lost weight and gained weight for parts, and there are lots of theories on how to do it.”

But it turns out it wasn’t quite any kind of bizarre routine or intense workout regime as the actor just looked at his co-star and said: “I didn’t eat.”

Damon added: “That guy is cut from a different cloth.”

Obviously, taking measures like this isn’t advised as safe and Bale previously said he was done with his dramatic transformations because he doesn’t want ‘to die’.

The film came out back in 2019. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

Also titled Le Mans ’66 in some parts of Europe, you can currently stream Ford v Ferrari on Disney+ in the UK.

With Bale dropping the pounds for the film, it’s hailed by fans as the ‘greatest car movie ever seen’.

The biographical sports drama was written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, and Jason Keller and directed by James Mangold. It tells the story of American car designer Carroll Shelby (Damon) and British-born driver Ken Miles (Bale) who represent Ford Motor Company at endurance focused car race 24 Hours of Le Mans, going head-to-head with one of Ford's biggest competitors.