Christian Bale is used to drastic appearance changes for his profession. After being a healthy weight for Reign of Fire in 2002, he then lost an insane 62 pounds for his skeletal figure The Machinist. He then gained it back for his muscular superhero role in Batman Begins. In 2013, he gained even more weight - 43 pounds - to become his overweight character in American Hustle.
He has undergone another wild transformation for his role as former vice president Dick Cheney in the new film Vice. In the trailer, released last week, he is unrecognizable - again.
Bale put on more than 40 pounds for the role of VP.“I had never before gone to a doctor or a nutritionist about gaining or losing weight for my roles,” Bale told Star2.com. “But eventually that caught up with me. So, finally for Backseat, I decided that maybe somebody knows better than I do; so I went to somebody and they managed to get me up a good 40lbs. It’s never healthy to put on that amount of weight in a short amount of time, but I did it in the healthiest manner.” (Men's Journal)
It may be easy to forget, but Bale, who was born in Wales, also had to adopt an American accent for the role.
Sam Rockwell plays the role of former President George W. Bush. In the trailer, he's seen gnawing on a chicken wing while asking Cheney to be his running mate.
After listing several of his stellar credentials - CEO of a large company, Secretary of Defense, White House Chief of Staff, etc. Bale's Cheney tells Bush that he's not sure he wants to accept because, "The vice presidency is a mostly symbolic job." But, he thinks they can work something out if he can take on some "mundane" jobs like overseeing bureaucracy, energy, and foreign policy. Bush nods and goes along with it. (If the trailer is an indication of anything, Vice is not going to portray Bush in the most intelligent light.)
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It is the "untold true story that changed the course of history forever," the trailer says.
There's more intriguing casting in Amy Adams as Mrs. Lynne Cheney, and Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld. And if you look really closely at the credits at the end, you can see Brad Pitt listed as a producer.
Vice is in theaters Christmas Day 2018.
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