The mediocrity of Christian Bale

(This is Bringing the Heat, an as-often-as-I-feel-like-it feature where I say something that will probably get me yelled at on Twitter.)

At the core, there are two things that go into an acting performance: The work done before the cameras start rolling, and the work done once the cameras are rolling. Daniel Day-Lewis is famous for acing the first half, and I would say he’s a fair amount of master at the second half.

But that’s the best. Other actors offer some level of balance between the before and the during — doing prep work and acting. Tim Robbins is good on screen in Bull Durham, except that he very clearly didn’t do the prep work to, you know, learn how to throw a baseball. That sort of thing. Most actors strike a balance, and how good the acting performance is generally is just “how good an actor is,” not how well they balance the two tasks.

That said, there are exceptions. Some actors excel at one part of the job and not the other. And no one exemplifies that more than Christian Bale.

I’m convinced there is no one who will do more to prepare for a role than Bale. The Machinist and Batman Begins came out less than a year apart, and he weighed 60-some pounds different between the roles. He lost wait again for Rescue Dawn, gained it for Dark Knight, lost it for The Fighter, gained it for The Dark Knight Rises, the gained it in a whole different way for movies like American Hustle and Vice.

And it’s not just weight. Bale is Welsh. But when he plays American characters, he does all the promotional interviews with an American accent. When he’s on set, he stays in character (or at least close). Basically, when Christian Bale is cast in a role, he throws his entire person into that role, whatever the case may be, to become that character.

Except he can’t really do it.

Like I said, no one will do more to get ready for a role than Bale. But once he’s on screen, once the cameras are rolling, once there’s no more prep work to be done … what do you really remember about his performances? You remember the weight he lost for The Machinist. You remember the weight he gained for Vice. You remember the bulking up for his various Batman roles. When it comes to an acting job, in the process of actually acting, it’s … what, the Batman growl? The impressive makeup of The Prestige to be Fallon? His entire acting job in American Psycho is “Look at me, I have crazy eyes now.” His “What?!” as Dicky in The Fighter is one of the most comical pieces of one-word acting you’ve ever seen.

Think back to your favorite Bale roles, your main memories of Bale as an actor. I would bet anything they come down largely to what he’s done with his body. I cannot imagine doing what he did to prep for The Machinist or gaining 60 pounds within the next year to play a badass superhero. No one will do more to get ready.

And then the cameras roll. And Christian Bale is average.