CHRISTIAN BALE

Gorr blimey…

How did you react when first presented with a character called Gorr the God Butcher?

You sort of go, ‘I know what he does.’ It’s right there in the name, isn’t it? But I did make the mistake of Googling him and, oh no! [In the comics] he runs around in a G-string all the time. And I thought, ‘They don’t have the right man for that!’ And then Taika quickly dispelled any notions of running around in that. But I always did think what he could do with this in front of a bluescreen – he could chuck on whatever he wants later on.

Beyond the comics, where did you draw inspiration from?

Mostly hearing Taika’s thoughts on it. There’s obviously sort of a Nosferatu slight attitude. Taika and I wanted to do a whole dance, which we didn’t get to do, but we had all this sort of Kate Bush stuff that we worked at. But I think he just realised he was never going to be allowed to put that in the final film. I would say that the most common thing I was staring at was the Aphex Twin video of ‘Come To Daddy’. But I don’t even know if that will be in the final film.

You’ve done some pretty extreme transformations in the past. Where does Gorr rank on that scale?

I’ve got to wait and see the final film. But, you know, I don’t judge myself very well. But I see in my kids’ eyes and, honestly, they never seem to give a shit. It doesn’t matter whether I’m 240lbs, or 150lbs, or whatever. They don’t bat an eye. So I’m sort of oblivious to all of that.

Did you have any qualms taking on another comic-book movie role after Batman?

Absolutely not, no. That didn’t even enter into my head at all. I’d read that, and people would go, ‘Oh, look at this! He’s entered the MCU!’ And I’d go, ‘I’ve done what? I haven’t entered shit, thank you very much.’ I’m like, ‘The MCU?’ I had to ask what that was.

Amsterdam with David O. Russell is up next…

I usually need quite a lot of time in between because I can’t spin on a dime. I’m very slow. But then the way that things worked out [because of the

pandemic], I had to go straight from David’s film to Taika’s. It was like three days from one… Like boom, boom. Straight to the other. And it was very, very different. But, yeah, I worked way more than anybody wanted me to, and I think I will disappear for a while now.