Christian Bale: Snapshot

Christian Bale: Five Fun Facts

1. As a child star, Christian Bale carried a tune in his first and only musical appearance, the 1992 Disney cult hit Newsies. "I'm still singing and dancing," he told Esquire. "I just don't like musicals, that's all."
2. Drew Barrymore calls Christian Bale her celebrity crush. "He's so cute! And I knew him when he was a kid," she told PEOPLE. "If he walked into the room now, I would totally clam up. Or I might go overboard and embarrass myself."
3. Christian Bale dropped 63 lbs. – a third of his body weight – on a diet of coffee, cigarettes and apples to play an insomniac in 2004's The Machinist. "I wouldn't have done that amount of weight loss if I hadn't thought the movie itself was worth seeing," he said.
4. The 1997 comedy Beverly Hills Ninja is one of Christian Bale's favorite movies. "One time I sat down and watched it two nights in a row, and cried with laughter both times," he told Esquire. "[Chris Farley] just was a phenomenon, and is missed dearly in my household."
5. A group of Christian Bale's fans raised more than $1,000 to "adopt" a baby gorilla through the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, one of the actor's favorite charities. "I sort of feel like I'm creating the Mob or something," he joked to EW.

Christian Bale: Biography

1970s

'Easy' Rider

After Louise, one of Bale's three sisters, gets cast in a musical on London's West End, the young chap is inspired to give acting a try. "I thought it was really good fun, and it looked easy," Bale tells The New York Times of his start, which gives way to several commercial gigs and his London stage debut at age 10 in The Nerd, opposite Rowan Atkinson.

1987

December 09

'Sun' Rise

Following bit parts in TV movies, Bale beats out 4,000 hopefuls for the lead role in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, playing a young British boy imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp. The performance earns Bale a best juvenile performance award from the National Board of Review, but the 13-year-old grows uncomfortable with his newfound fame. "I ran from it," he later tells the AP of his early success. "I said, 'I like the acting, but I really don't want anything to do with the rest of it.'"

1994

December 21

Return to Hollywood

Though he plays second fiddle to stars Winona Ryder and Claire Danes, Bale makes a memorable comeback with Little Women. "Handsome Christian Bale makes a dreamboat out of Laurie, the boy next door to the March family," writes The New York Times of his performance. In 1998, he tackles another period piece with Velvet Goldmine, playing a newspaper reporter researching the disappearance of a '70s glam rock star.

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Christian Bale: Special Feature