Damon and Bale go into overdrive in Ford v Ferrari

France’s legendary le

Mans race, the central contest depicted in James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari, runs more than 3,000 miles over the course of 24 hours. But that’s nothing compared to the distance Christian Bale had to cover coming off playing Dick Cheney in Vice.

“When I first signed up for it, Jim said, ‘This is great, we’ve got six months until we start. Christian weighs 240 pounds,’” recalls Matt Damon. “I was like, ‘He weighs what?’”

Bale, sitting next to his co-star, lights up. “He’s rolling down the track!” Bale says, laughing. “Without a car!”

“I would just get these periodic updates. But he did it,” says Damon, shaking his head. “When I saw him on set, I said, ‘How did you lose 70 pounds?’ And he just said, ‘Didn’t eat.’”

In Ford v Ferrari, releasing in the UAE tomorrow, Damon plays visionary automotive designer Carroll Shelby and Bale plays maverick British racer Ken Miles. Shelby and Miles were brought together by the Ford Motor Co. to defeat perennial Le Mans champions Ferrari in 1966. They are both dedicated, driven personalities who chafe at the dictates of the overlords at Ford. Ford v Ferrari, a rare big-budget original film, is about high-speed mavericks shrugging off corporate control to accomplish something singular.

For its two movie stars, it’s a story not so unlike the battles of getting movies – movies like Ford v Ferrari – made in today’s Hollywood.

“The parallels to the movie business, they were pretty easy for all of us to see,” says Damon. “Shelby and Ken needed Ford. They weren’t going to get anywhere without Ford, and they knew it. And Ford needed them. That’s the movie business. There’s always that tension.”

Love and hate

“There should be,” adds Bale. “There has to be that tension in order to create something wonderful. There’s got to be love for something and there’s got to be a certain amount of hate for it as well. I think both sides understand, ‘Hey, we can’t do it without them. And they can’t do that without us.’”

“But if you get too pally, the films won’t be any good,” quips Bale.

Ford v Ferrari is their first film together even though Damon, 49, and

Bale, 45, are roughly contemporaries.

“I think I’ve taken a lot of roles that Matt passed on,” says Bale. “I’ve worked thanks to Matt, just not with Matt.” A significant part of the fun of Ford v Ferrari is seeing their dynamic together. Shelby, a Le Mans champion, was the more famous of the two. He’s more adept at balancing their racing needs with those of their corporate overlords. Miles, with his chin upturned, is a proud, pugnacious perfectionist who can’t, for a second, suffer fools.

Mangold, the maker of muscular genre films like Cop Land and Logan, had worked with Bale before on the 2007 western 3:10 to Yuma, and he was convinced Bale was intended to be Miles. “Jim had taken the script to Christian and I guess he was taking his time with it,” remembers Damon.

“Jim finally called and he goes, ‘This is you! What is taking you so long?!’ And Christian’s like, ‘Do you think I’m a (expletive)?’ He goes, ‘No, not that part. The part about him being a perfectionist and a pure racer.’”

“Yes, he was a real purist and would happily, knowingly win the battle and lose the war at the same time,” says Bale. “They’re both absolutely insane. “They just exhibit it in different ways.”

Racing star

Bale and Damon are playing extensions of themselves, Mangold says.

“Matt’s been a movie star forever. Shelby was a star in racing forever,” said Mangold. “And Christian, one of the things I’ve always felt about him is he’s such a lovely, charming, loving person. So many of the characters he’s chosen to play along the way are incredible portrayals but are very, very dark. But there’s something extremely effervescent and playful and inspired about this character and it’s so much closer, to me, about who Christian really is.”

Ford v Ferrari cost nearly $100 million to make for 20th Century Fox. Following the studio’s acquisi