Quotes by Christian Bale

• Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.
• It's got to do with putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing how far you can come to truly understand them. I like the empathy that comes from acting.
• The point of having a director is that they make the final decision; it's their point of view, they set the rhythm and they make the final decisions.
• Nuclear apocalypse - who do you need? Actors are probably not top of the list. What can I do for you? I can pretend to be somebody who can grow you some nice crops.
• No, only disappointment in myself on those occasions I didn't manage to rise to the occasion as I felt I should've done. I can always see how to do it, and then the challenge is, Can I manage that each and every day?
• My hope is that people will be repulsed by the character's complete lack of ethics and obsession with consumerism - that's what I was saying about the difference between the character's message and the film's message.
• It's the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience.
• There have been many times when you spend a number of months and the finished product is not what you wanted to see. And 'Batman Begins' was what I wanted to see.
• It's not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me.
• There are movies that require fantasy and slightly more fantastical acting. Lines that are good for certain movies, in real life circumstances, would be absolutely unbelievable things to really say, and you would look at these people like they're freaks for conversing that way. But somehow for certain styles of movies, it works, and it seems fine.
• It's about pursuing it rather than waiting to see what comes along. That's partly because I found myself getting typecast, as everyone does unless they pursue roles that are very different from what they've done before.
• In terms of the romantic kind of lead, I just never enjoy those movies very much. Maybe they'll come to interest me more as I get older. I doubt it, but maybe. Romantic comedies tend to be, for me, an oxymoron.
• In everyday life, my wife is the most wonderful. We're in love with each other beyond belief.
• If everyone really knew what a jerk I am in real life, I wouldn't be so adored in the slightest.
• I've had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I'm trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don't want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that.
• I'm English. Our dentistry is not world famous.
• The interesting thing about a movie is the movie.
• We are starting off with our own different characters and our own laws and everything, looking at Bruce Wayne and how he came to be the person that he was and how he comes to be this man that jumps around in the Bat suit.
• What the hell kind of man decides to dress up as a bat and run around the city? There's got to be something a little bit loose in there.
• When it comes to films, people often don't differentiate between the message of a bad central character and the message of the film itself. They are two separate things.
• You're creating a different world and the actor's job is to be able to convince the audience to enter into that world, whether it be actually something that you recognize from your own life or not.
• So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor.
• I tend to think you're fearless when you recognize why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway.
• I have this theory that, depending on your attitude, your life doesn't have to become this ridiculous charade that it seems so many people end up living.
• An actor should never be larger than the film he's in.
• I went backwards and forwards over it until I was 22. And then in the past few years I began to say to myself, OK, look, I'm not messing around. This is something I want to attack, instead of thinking, I'll just see what happens with it.
• I only sound intelligent when there's a good script writer around.
• I never want to feel that I'm playing it safe.
• I mean, first of all, let me say whichever superhero first came up with the idea of wearing a cape, he wasn't really onto anything good. The number of times I'm treading on that damn thing or I throw a punch and it ends up covering my whole head. It's really not practical.
• I will never say never, but I will say never to doing the more typical romantic comedies. You know, unless I'm getting audited and I'm on the street and I desperately need some dough and that's the only thing that I'm getting.
• I like the idea of movies having a magic element. How many times have you seen an actor in a movie who you know only as the character? It's wonderful, isn't it?
• All of the muscles were gone, so that was a real tough time of rebuilding all of that. But you have a deadline, you have an obligation. You've said that you will commit to this part, and I just can't live with myself for not really giving it as much as I can.
• I have a fear of being boring.
• I don't think I'm like any of the characters I've played - they're all really far from who I am.
• I don't personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.
• But I learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.
• But I enjoyed getting sick, I didn't mind it at all. So in that short amount of time, I did actually go from 121 right back up to 180, which is way too fast obviously. And that resulted in some doctors visits to get things sorted out.
• 'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.
• And being as I'm somebody who loves movies like The Machinist, I also love going along to big mass entertainment movies. I get in the mood for all kinds of movies, and so I like to try each of them.
• A movie star is someone people look at and go, 'I want to be like that person'. There's the responsibility of desire. It's not something I'm interested in trying. I would fail miserably at it, so why even bother?