Bale takes enlightening journey through ‘Hostiles’ landscape
LOS ANGELES — Nearly bald with a buzz cut and bulging with an extra 40 pounds, an almost unrecognizable Christian Bale sat, patting his now ample belly as he talked about “Hostiles.”
Scott Cooper’s epic 1892 Western is set as the Wild West was nearly tamed. Bale’s Army Capt. Joseph Blocker, an Indian-hating veteran, reluctantly follows orders to return a dying chief (Wes Studi) to his reservation.
The long journey is deadly but changes those who survive.
“I am fascinated with my adopted country America and this just gripped me,” said the Welsh-born Bale, 44.
Blocker, he said during a one-on-one interview at the Four Seasons, is “quiet. Not a man of many words but a complex character.”
“Hostiles” is “an investigation of hatred. How you come to be somebody so filled with hatred? And how do you stop that? How do you stop without rendering your brothersin-arms’ deaths (via Indian attacks) meaningless?
“You don’t have the answers too quickly and,” he added, “the fact we shot it chronologically created a wonderful opportunity of the journey. There were no mistakes along the way as we filmed from New Mexico to Colorado.”
Bale’s added pounds, he revealed, are due to having just days earlier wrapped Adam McKay’s new comedy about Dick Cheney (pudgy Bale) and George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell). They first teamed on McKay’s “The Big Short,” which won Bale an Oscar nomination as a barefoot, surfboarding financier.
Bale famously lost 63 pounds for “The Machinest” in 2004 to play Trevor Reznik, then rebuilt his physique for Batman.
Why torture himself this way? “I’m just mental. I’m just the demented individual,” he said with a smile.
“You get used to it. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I don’t know if it’s the healthiest. I see other actors have been able to just turn it on and off. That’s fine.
“But for me I don’t know how to do it like that.”
When he spends months as Blocker or now Cheney, can he be free of them when filming stops?
“For me, it gets more into my consciousness and you have to rid yourself of it. It’s like a sickness I love.”