
British actor Christian Bale knows what he can and can’t do. He therefore chooses his roles with care.
LONDON – British actor Christian Bale (“The Dark Knight”) never accepts role offers before reading the script. “No, I never do that. I’m an annoying bastard when it comes to that,” Bale told the German Press Agency in London. “I will never commit myself absolutely to anything. I’ll wait and see if I warm up to it.”
According to his own statement, the 48-year-old first wants to make sure that the role suits him. “Because I always want to know what I can contribute first,” says Bale. “Everyone has their weaknesses. There are things I can’t do. What if the director thinks I can do something – and then I have to say, ‘Sorry mate, that’s beyond my abilities?’
That’s hard to imagine, though, with Bale, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter in 2011 and has since been nominated for the film industry’s most coveted award three more times. In his new film Amsterdam (theatrical release November 3), Bale plays a hobbling, glass-eyed war veteran who and his friends uncover a political conspiracy in America in the 1930s. dpa