It’s that magical time again when Christian Bale has a new movie coming out and he has zero qualms about being blunt as hell about the acting business (and, of course, himself). While promoting his new film, Amsterdam, Bale took part in a lengthy cover interview for GQ where he opened up about his early acting days and how he admittedly saw the profession as mostly a means to prevent his dad’s house from being repossessed after he fell ill. That financial ambition was around during the time he landed his iconic role in American Psycho, which he only got because he was willing to work for a salary that was the bare legal minimum.
During the course of that discussion, GQ writer Zach Baron noted that Leonardo DiCaprio was briefly cast in the Patrick Batemen role, but ultimately walked away. Baron then asked Bale if it’s true that he lost at least five roles to DiCaprio in just the ’90s, including Titanic, and that’s when The Dark Knight star revealed that every actor is living off of Leo’s table scraps:
Oh, dude. It’s not just me. Look, to this day, any role that anybody gets, it’s only because he’s passed on it beforehand. 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. Right? 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.
Bale, of course, never took losing roles to DiCaprio personally. “Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing?” Bale said. “I mean, I can’t do what he does. I wouldn’t want the exposure that he has either. And he does it magnificently.”
Amsterdam opens in theaters on October 7.
(Via GQ)
