Christian Bale did the right thing and stopped by Aurora Medical Center in Colorado yesterday to meet with seven people being treated for their injuries from the shooting last Friday, even stopping to take a picture with Carey Rottman here, who’s apparently some kind of Sox fan. “Hey, Tawmmy, go git Squeezebawx and Dago Steve an tell em ta come to the hawspital, the fackin dahk knight just signed my Sawx hat.”
Bill Voloch, interim president of Medical Center of Aurora, said Bale spent about 2½ hours at the hospital, where he met with five people still being treated for their injuries. Two others came from Swedish Medical Center to meet Bale.
Bale and his wife, Sibi Blazic, also met with a number of doctors, Aurora police officers and emergency medicial technicians who were first reponders when James Eagan Holmes allegedly killed 12 people and injured 58 others at Century Aurora 16 theater early Friday morning. Bale spent about 10 minutes with each person.
Voloch said Bale notified that he wanted to visit the injured, but asked that media not be notified. “He just wanted to meet with victims and police.” [DenverPost]
Bale flew in from Europe, where the Paris premiere of the Dark Knight Rises had been canceled, to make the visit. It’s cooler to think he came because he just knew it was the right thing to do (and that might still be the case), but there was also a social media campaign to get him to come:
On Twitter Friday, the hashtag #BaleOutAurora, called for “Dark Knight Rises” star Christian Bale to come to Aurora and visit injured children in the hospital while donning his famous Batman costume. The campaign seems to stem from a Facebook post that that was screen-capped and spread virally in which the writer urged Bale to act accordingly because the children involved in the massacre need a reminder that “heroes can be real too, not just bad guys.” [LATimes]
Either way, it’s a cool move, and it just goes to show that it doesn’t take a whole lot for an actor to make people’s day. That’s right, I’m talking to you, Jessica Biel, Ms. Can’t Take The Time Out Of Her Busy Schedule to Answer A Few Hundred Love Letters.
And on the nice guy scale, Bale still can’t touch Mickey Rourke, who once visited a Russian cancer hospital just because, and even offered to bicep curl a prostitute while he was there.
[Pictures via HuffPo, DenverPost, NYDailyNews]