Christian Bale’s insane diet during the making of ‘The Machinist’
Drastic body transformations have been a recurring theme of Christian Bale‘s career for years, but it wasn’t something he was particularly well-known for until after The Machinist was released in December 2004. While his breakthrough role in American Psycho and debut as a blockbuster leading man in Reign of Fire required him to bulk up and show off a chiselled physique, for the most part, he tended to look like himself whenever he appeared on-screen.
However, his turn as Trevor Reznik in Brad Anderson’s psychological thriller saw the actor push his body to the limit in order to achieve the character’s emaciated frame. It didn’t come recommended by doctors, and Bale himself admits he struggled in the aftermath, but it never sounded as though he actively regretted dropping so much weight.
“It’s an amazing experience doing that,” he said to The Guardian. “When you’re so skinny that you can hardly walk up a flight of stairs, you’re like, this being of pure thought”. Describing “two hours of sleep” as “the most Zen-like state I’ve ever been in my life,” Bale didn’t seem to be deterred by the measures he took in order to portray the withered Reznik convincingly.
According to his former publicist and assistant Harrison Cheng, Bale’s diet for The Machinist consisted of “water, an apple, and one cup of coffee per day, with the occasional whiskey”. This resulted in him dropping 62 pounds in total. Furthering his preparations, Bale would even hit pause on his social life to get the job done.
“I’d do a bit of eating hardly anything and losing 51 pounds, and then I’d put on 7 pounds bingeing one night because I’d have a couple of drinks,” he explained. “So I decided no more social life, no more friends, no more dinners, no more drinks.” He may have won strong notices for his fearless dedication, but issues almost immediately arose when he was cast as Batman.
Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins started shooting a matter of months after The Machinist had wrapped, forcing Bale to rapidly regain both the weight he’d lost while finding the time to sculpt those vast amounts of calories into a body worthy of a superhero. Bale “was straight into pizza and ice cream and everything, and just eating five meals in a sitting” to try and convince his body to play catch-up, ignoring advice to “just go with soups” to begin the process, which ended up making him violently ill and expanding his stomach.
It was an impressive turnaround to go straight from The Machinist into Batman Begins, given the timespan between the two projects. While it wasn’t one that had a noticeably adverse impact on Bale’s long-term health, it’s not a transformation that would come recommended by medical professionals.