Quotes By Christian Bale

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.

I only sound intelligent when there's a good script writer around.

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.

'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.

And being as I'm somebody who loves movies like The Machinist, I also love going along to big mass entertainment movies. I get in the mood for all kinds of movies, and so I like to try each of them.

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

I don't have acknowledged preferences of characters.

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.

Look, I've got incredible pride for my family. I've absolutely fallen into that cliche of a dad who could just happily talk about my daughter endlessly.

I will never say never, but I will say never to doing the more typical romantic comedies. You know, unless I'm getting audited and I'm on the street and I desperately need some dough and that's the only thing that I'm getting.

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.

I don't want to know about the lives of other actors and I don't want people to know too much about me. If we don't know about the private lives of other actors, that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters. That's the point, they can create these other characters and I can believe them.

I always figure hey, look, I'm not a rock star, I'm an actor. I'm somebody who's meant to be other people and I'm not meant to be here representing myself. I'm happier when I'm presenting myself as other characters.

I tend to think you're fearless when you recognize why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway.

A teenager usually wants to try to get people to notice him in some way, to feel like someone gives a damn. Me, all that attention, I just wanted to fade into the background. Be invisible. Disappear.

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?

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

I think mostly it's the adventure that I will have in making the movie. That's what I look for.

I have this theory that, depending on your attitude, your life doesn't have to become this ridiculous charade that it seems so many people end up living.

It's not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me.

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.

I'll find myself having dinner with people and someone will mention something and I will say I was in that situation once. Then I'll say, forget it, it was a scene I was in. That can get to be quite confusing.

One of the places where we lived when I was growing up had this big wood out the back. And starting when I was about 8, I used to enjoy just walking alone through the wood late. Eleven p.m. Midnight. Later.

How serious can a movie about time-traveling robots be? You want it to be cool and fun.

I never want to turn something down because I'm afraid to do it, because of some idea of image or whatever. That was never anything I set out to do. In fact, the opposite, I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make.

What the hell kind of man decides to dress up as a bat and run around the city? There's got to be something a little bit loose in there.

But I enjoyed getting sick, I didn't mind it at all. So in that short amount of time, I did actually go from 121 right back up to 180, which is way too fast obviously. And that resulted in some doctors visits to get things sorted out.

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.