Christian Bale, the actor, has revealed that he owes his success to “Titanic” star Leonardo DiCaprio, and here’s why.
Christian Bale is a veteran actor known for his physical transformations and versatility in roles such as “Batman Begins,” “Thor: Love and Thunder,” and others. Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards, including the Saturn Award for “Best Actor” in 2006 for “Batman Begins” and the People’s Choice Award for “Favorite Superhero” in “The Dark Knight.”
However, in a recent GQ cover story, the 48-year-old actor addresses his alleged “rivalry” with Leonardo DiCaprio from the 1990s, when he reportedly lost multiple roles to the “Wolf of Wall Street” star.
Bale said that most of his roles were first offered to Leonardo DiCaprio before he got them and that this was common for other actors in Hollywood.
Bale said of Di Caprio:
“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. So, thank you, Leo, because literally, he gets to choose everything he does. And good for him, he’s phenomenal.”
The alleged rivalry between DiCaprio and Bale dates back to the 1990s, when the two frequently auditioned for the same roles. Bale had also tried out for the role of Jack in DiCaprio’s breakthrough film, “Titanic.”
Notably, Bale revealed that while he landed his breakthrough role in “American Psycho” as the infamous serial killer Patrick Bateman, the role was originally intended for Leonardo DiCaprio. Although the role catapulted him into mainstream success, Bale revealed that he was offered the lowest salary after DiCaprio declined the role.
He said:
“They had paid me the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me. 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.”
Despite the two stars’ long-running “rivalry,” Bale insists that he never took it personally and still holds DiCaprio in high regard.