Christian Bale's Wild Physical Transformation Through The Years

‘American Psycho’ (2000) — To truly accomplish his role as a narcissistic psychopath he had to get physically and mentally into the role. According to ‘Train Mag’, “there were no cheat meals. It was all lean protein. No sugars, good fats and low carbs.”

‘The Machinist’ (2004) — One of Bale’s wildest transformations shows a part of him that demonstrates he has an incredible will to achieve what he puts his mind to. According to ‘Men’s Health’, the film producers wouldn’t let him drop lower than 120 pounds, “because of health concerns,” even though he insisted.

‘Batman Begins’ (2005) — Everyone has seen the ‘Batman’ movies, and, of course, we will talk about all three of them because he made incredible changes in a short time. Here, he had five months to go from skinny 120 lb to 190 lb. He actually overdid it, according to ‘Screenrant’ and went up to 220 lb before dropping down to 190 lb.

‘Rescue Dawn’ (2006) — A short time after gaining his incredible body weight in healthy fats and muscle, he was forced to return to a skinny role. In this case, he was a prisoner of war so he had to reflect the body changes of the situation he was in. Curiously enough, ‘Movieweb’ reports that filming was done backwards since Bale lost weight and gained it back slowly during a month’s worth of filming.

‘The Dark Knight’ (2008) — Three years later he repeated what he had done before but had learned from his previous method (stuffing himself with ice cream and pizza) that there were more effective ways to get in better shape. This time around he said he ate “smaller meals every two or three hours. Each meal I would aim for a balance of lean proteins, carbs and good, healthy fats,” according to ‘Train Mag’.

‘The Fighter’ (2010) — This time in reverse; Bale was probably enjoying having a good balanced diet, healthy body, and routine. However, his next role required him to be a drug addict, who are infamous for being skinny. Lucky, he told ‘Men’s Health’ he “could just run for hours on end and I felt really healthy.”

‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (2012) — For the last movie in the series Bale had to hit the gym again, but this time around he could take it just a tap easier, since the film revolved around an opponent that was physically stronger than Batman, as he told ‘MTV’, “this is the first adversary [Bane] that can physically dominate Batman. And we should recognize also in his somewhat weakened state that this is just not the same Batman that we've been accustomed to seeing before.”

‘American Hustle’ (2013) — In probably one of the most fun diets he has done, Bale had to gain weight in just one spot. To achieve this he “ate lots of doughnuts, a whole lot of cheeseburgers and whatever I could get my hands on. I literally ate anything that came my way. I was about 185 and went up to 228,” according to ‘People’.

‘Exodus’ (2014) — As fun as it is to eat junk food, sit around all day, and relax eventually he was going to have to get back in shape for another role. Since he had gained a lot of weight in an unhealthy manner, he had to focus primarily on cardio exercises and only had around 6 months to do it.

‘Vice’ (2018) — And the cycle repeats itself. Bale had to perform another role where he was overweight, and in our opinion at least, this role seemed to have even more pounds to gain. ‘Men’s Health’ reports that he “ate a lot of pies.”