Hollywood
Christian Bale Says That He Wouldn't Be Where He Is Today Without Leonardo DiCaprio
By Justin Drea
Oct 7, 2022 8:37 PM
Jason Merritt
One of the most beautiful things about the world of acting is the mutual respect that great actors share for one another and the most recent instance depicting this phenomenon is an interview, in which Christian Bale admits without any hesitation that he owes his career to Leonardo DiCaprio because apparently DiCaprio got his pick of the parts he wanted to play and some of Bale’s most iconic roles were given to him only after Leonardo passed on them.
Christian Bale joked while speaking to GQ:
“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,” Bale further added.
Bale said that Leo gets to choose his parts and rightfully so because he is an amazing actor:
“So, thank you, Leo, because literally, he gets to choose everything he does. And good for him, he’s phenomenal.”
Bale also added that he holds no negative feelings about the fact that casting directors would rather have Leo in his place because he respects Leo that much and he knows that no one can do what Leo does. He said:
“No. Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing? I mean, I can’t do what he does. And he does it magnificently. But I would suspect that almost everybody of similar age to him in Hollywood owes their careers to him passing on whatever project it is.”
One of Bale’s breakthrough roles in American Psycho was first offered to Leonardo DiCaprio and only given to Bale after he rejected it. Bale reportedly got paid a significantly small amount for the role because no one really wanted him to take the role and the filmmakers said they would only go through with it if they can pay Bale the small sum.
“They had paid me the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me,” said Bale while speaking to GQ, “I remember one time sitting in the makeup trailer, and the makeup artists were laughing at me because I was getting paid less than any of them.”
American Psycho went on to become a major hit and Bale rose to mainstream success after that.