Christian Bale Reveals How He Put Weight On For His Upcoming Role

You've really got to give it to Christian Bale - when it comes down to it, he's pretty dedicated to his craft.

Not for the first time, he looks unrecognisable thanks to playing former Vice President Dick Cheney in an upcoming biopic. The role has meant him emulating the former VP's stocky frame and even dying his eyebrows to complete the aesthetic.

Credit: PA

Titled Backseat, the film will explore the influence Dick Cheney wielded during the Bush administration and his considerable role in American foreign policy following 9/11.

He's since revealed how he managed to gain so much weight, and there's literally no secret to it at all.

Speaking to Variety, he said that he's been eating a lot of pies. By that logic a lot of us could start getting into this acting lark.

Surely it can't be a bad thing to sign up for a role and then be told that you have to shovel pies into your mouth, without feeling any guilt? It'd be great.

The 43-year-old is well known for his physical transformations when switching from role to role - it seems he makes the moves between stacked and skinny with relative ease.

When Bale played Mark Walhberg's drug-addicted half-brother Dicky Eklund in The Fighter (for which he won an Oscar), he shed the pounds big time. But this was a piece of cake for the Dark Knight actor in comparison to the lengths he went to in preparation for 2003's The Machinist...

Credit: Paramount Classic

Obviously there will have been absolutely no pies when achieving this skeletal frame.

He managed that through a diet of "water, an apple and one cup of coffee per day, with the occasional whiskey", losing 62 pounds in the process. Legend has it he wanted to go even further, only for producers to stop him because he could have died.

But six months later he was playing the lead role in Batman Begins, and had to bulk up through a high-protein diet and regime involving heavy-core, plyometrics and resistance training. He initially packed on a whopping 100 pounds, only for director Christopher Nolan to turn around and tell him to lose 20 because he'd gained too much weight.

Source: NME

Topics: Entertainment, TV and Film, Christian Bale

Mark McGowan

Mark is a journalist at LADbible, who joined in 2015 after a year as a freelance writer. In the past he blogged for independent football fan channel Redmen TV, after graduating from Staffordshire University with degrees in journalism and English literature. He has worked on campaigns such as UOKM8? and IIOC.