Christian Bale Was Obsessed with Playing Batman, Wouldn't Let Nolan Cast Anyone Else
While the actor wasn’t the only option Christopher Nolan was considering for The Dark Knight trilogy, Bale’s obsession with playing Batman made him unstoppable.
Christian Bale is a phenomenal actor; scratch that — Christian Bale is one of the best actors of his generation and beyond it. The actor’s brilliance turned a plethora of good movies into masterpieces, and his dedication to the craft is simply unmatched as Bale is one of the most famous method actors on the planet.
Bale has delivered numerous outstanding performances throughout his acting career, but for many people — especially superhero fans — he is mostly known as Bruce Wayne or Batman. The actor changed the way the Caped Crusader was seen and severely impacted all live-action adaptations of Batman that followed his.
The Dark Knight audition was special for Bale: he genuinely wanted to play Bruce Wayne, and he tried his best. As the actor revealed, he was enamored with director Nolan’s interpretation of Batman which was way darker than anyone else’s.
“[I] realized that he was a really great character, a dark severe character, unlike anything that I had realized he can be before. So that’s when I first thought to myself, ‘I really want to play this character,’” shared the actor.
However, Christian Bale was not the only actor Christopher Nolan was considering for the role. In fact, he had great performers like Cillian Murphy and Josh Hartnett as his competitors — but at one point, Bale became so obsessed with portraying Batman that he was very much not having any other actor play the part but himself.
“By the time I actually came to be cast, I kind of got so obsessed about it that I kind of viewed it as it being mine already. It would’ve been more like…if they had told me like ‘No it’s not yours,’ I would’ve been like ‘No way. That’s not working out, that’s not going to happen,’” explained Bale in his interview with Black Film.
Like millions of other fans all around the world, we’re really glad that Christian Bale got the role in the end and delivered the most memorable and multi-layered live-action Dark Knight. For us, it’s weird to picture a different actor playing the part in Nolan’s trilogy, and we’re honestly not sure how someone else would’ve fared.
Source: Black Film