Quotes By Christian Bale

I have a fear of being boring.

It's got to do with putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing how far you can come to truly understand them. I like the empathy that comes from acting.

Planning a career, I always find that such a tricky thing, because I don't have much of a plan, really.

I do like taking stuff seriously that a lot of people look at as nonsense. I enjoy the insanity of that. And I like the commitment that is needed for that.

I started my career without fans.

My hope is that people will be repulsed by the character's complete lack of ethics and obsession with consumerism - that's what I was saying about the difference between the character's message and the film's message.

All of the muscles were gone, so that was a real tough time of rebuilding all of that. But you have a deadline, you have an obligation. You've said that you will commit to this part, and I just can't live with myself for not really giving it as much as I can.

I like the idea of movies having a magic element. How many times have you seen an actor in a movie who you know only as the character? It's wonderful, isn't it?

It's the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience.

My dad was the biggest influence on my life because he was never boring.

I don't think I'm like any of the characters I've played - they're all really far from who I am.

The only thing I would unequivocally say is that I have never had any interest in romantic comedy I just couldn't do it. I think I'd be terrible.

So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor.

Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.

And I not only inherited an aversion to the nine-to-five routine, but the sense from my parents that being bored and boring is the worst thing that you can be.

I mean, first of all, let me say whichever superhero first came up with the idea of wearing a cape, he wasn't really onto anything good. The number of times I'm treading on that damn thing or I throw a punch and it ends up covering my whole head. It's really not practical.

If everyone really knew what a jerk I am in real life, I wouldn't be so adored in the slightest.

There have been many times when you spend a number of months and the finished product is not what you wanted to see. And 'Batman Begins' was what I wanted to see.

Essentially, I'm untrained, so I just go with my imagination and try to put myself as solidly as I can into the shoes of whatever person I'm going to be playing.

But I learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.

Certainly I have no attraction to misery. I don't intentionally go for dark.

I think trying too hard to be sexy is the worst thing in the world a woman can do.

When it comes to films, people often don't differentiate between the message of a bad central character and the message of the film itself. They are two separate things.

All I've ever ended up with in terms of achievements is the movie, some really stupid anecdotes, a bunch of crosswords that I didn't finish and maybe some old bicycle that I found lying around on set.

In everyday life, my wife is the most wonderful. We're in love with each other beyond belief.

I don't personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.

'3:10 to Yuma' was one that I just kept on talking and thinking about after reading it. And I think the reason is because, like in most Westerns, you have the very clear-cut bad-guy/good-guy, however, as the movie progresses, you kind of see that it's a very fine line that divides these two.

There are movies that require fantasy and slightly more fantastical acting. Lines that are good for certain movies, in real life circumstances, would be absolutely unbelievable things to really say, and you would look at these people like they're freaks for conversing that way. But somehow for certain styles of movies, it works, and it seems fine.

The point of having a director is that they make the final decision; it's their point of view, they set the rhythm and they make the final decisions.

I'm an actor I'm not a politician. I always kick myself when I talk too much about family, or personal things.