Christian Bale is opening up about his colleague, Leonardo DiCaprio, who he wishes to thank. While conversing with GQ, Bale reveals that he was able to portray some of the most iconic roles after DiCaprio passed them on.
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The Batman actor says that “it’s not just me” who is playing second to the Oscar winner and that in Hollywood, “any role that anybody gets, it’s only because [DiCaprio has] passed on it beforehand,” reported HuffPost.
“It doesn’t matter what anyone tells you. It doesn’t matter how friendly you are with the directors. All those people that I’ve worked with multiple times, they all offered every one of those roles to him first,” Bale said.
The American Hustle star thanked DiCaprio, and added, “I had one of those people actually tell me that. So, thank you, Leo, because literally, he gets to choose everything he does. And good for him, he’s phenomenal.”
Harrison Cheung, Bale’s former publicist and assistant, said in his book, Christian Bale: The Inside Story of the Darkest Batman, that the actor also missed out on critical roles because of DiCaprio such as Jack Dawson for the 1997 critically-acclaimed “Titanic.” Some of the other roles that went to DiCaprio included This Boy’s Life, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Romeo & Juliet and The Beach.
However, Bale doesn’t take it personally, rather, he is actually “grateful.” “Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing?” he replied. “I mean, I can’t do what he does. I wouldn’t want the exposure that he has either. And he does it magnificently. But I would suspect that almost everybody of similar age to him in Hollywood owes their careers to him passing on whatever project it is.”
While Bale has won many accolades, including an Oscar for his supporting role in 2011’s The Fighter—along with being a four-time nominee—Bale said he never truly considered himself “a leading man.”
“It’s just boring,” he said. “You don’t get the good parts. Even if I play a lead, I pretend I’m playing like, you know, the fourth, fifth character down, because you get more freedom. I also don’t really think about the overall effect that [a character is] going to have. It’s for me to play around, much like animals and children do. Have tunnel vision about what you’re doing, not think about the effect you’re having.”
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His upcoming movie, Amsterdam, will be released on 7 October.
