“Any film you do, you should treat it like the last film you’re ever gonna make.” Christian Bale
“He’s just one of the 10 greatest film actors ever. And I would just say if you’re going to like create that list of people that are chameleons, people that are really artists, I started doing all this stuff in 1990, which is crazy. And so I met a lot of actors. We had a lot of hosts at Saturday Night Live. I was doing those short films. I got to work with feature actors and I just started noticing that there is a giant gulf between personality actors who kind of operate off their charisma with some real skills and then these like I mean for lack of a better term but like real artists and Bale just wow. Wow! Seeing his process was incredible. I was watching it and I was thinking, “Oh my god, he’s that’s Michael Burry on the screen.” – writer/director, Adam McKay on why he chose Christian Bale to play Michael Burry in The Big Short
The author Michael Lewis tells this fantastic story about Christian Bale and his portrayal of Michael Burry in his podcast, “Against The Rules” (excellent podcast by the way)…
,I could not have told Christian Bale how to do it. That meant Christian Bale figured stuff out that I had that I had not articulated. So, this bothered me because I thought I’m an observant chap. I should have observed whatever it was that he would have needed to play Michael Burry. So, we’re on the the junket and I’m, you know, on stage you know, four or five times with Christian Bale and you sometimes talking about the movie in the book and the story and backstage I have a lot of time to chitchat with him. And I kept badgering. I’m like, “How the hell did you do that?” Because all I knew was what Michael Burry had told me. Michael Burry said, I called him. I said, “What’s going on with the movie?” He goes, he said, Christian Bale visited me. He’s the weirdest guy I’ve ever met.
I said, ‘If Michael Burry is calling you weird. And I said, ‘Well, what was weird about it? He said, he [Bale] just wanted to come for a day. He came in the morning, sat across from me until the evening, did not get up to go to the bathroom and just watched me the whole day and asked me some questions. And then at the end of it, he said, “Could I just, could I have that t-shirt and those shorts cuz I’m going to use those? I’m going to wear those when I play you.” And Wow.
And but I So I went to Christian Bale. I said like what the hell happened in those 12 hours? Like what did you figure out? Because there was something about his body language. It was I couldn’t figure out why he had got him because Michael Barry in his presence you feel this discomfort and Christian Bale had replicated that. And he says to me, I don’t want to talk about it. I really pestered him. And finally he says okay he says it wasn’t that complicated. All you, if you watch him you could see he does. It’s a breathing. He breathes in the wrong places of sentences. Yes! And he says as long and if you do that you get all herky jerky and I had not noticed that the the genius in seeing that was just breathtaking to me and he said to me I told McKay just remind me to breathe in the wrong places and everything else will come .
Genius. You can’t explain it. But you know and feel it when you see it.
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