Christian Bale Would Have Been Fine Playing Batman For The Rest Of His Career

Christian Bale is a great actor who, if his exceedingly rare interviews are to be believed, hates acting. Loathes it. Kinda wishes he'd never done it in the first place. But it's a living, and he's awfully good at it, so he keeps snagging multi-million paydays because it beats hosing down dumpsters out back of an East St. Louis Denny's.

Sometimes, his distaste for his profession, and the lesser talents with whom he occasionally comes into contact, turns into full-blown fury. You've probably heard his freak-out on the set of "Terminator: Salvation," where he goes nuclear on cinematographer Shane Hurlbut for futzing with his lights in the middle of Bale's take. While it's horribly unprofessional to excoriate a co-worker like this in any line of work, it's still a hilariously colorful dressing down. And somewhat understandable. If you find yourself making a half-assed Terminator movie directed by McG, you might be a tad on edge.

On the other end of the ledger, if you're fortunate enough to reinvigorate the Batman franchise with a world-class filmmaker like Christopher Nolan, and you've got an antagonistic relationship with the craft of acting, you might be partial to doing nothing but that.

In an interview with GQ pegged to the release of David O. Russell's "Amsterdam," Bale reveals that he would've happily played The Dark Knight for the rest of his career:

"Yeah, but I loved it. I loved that because I was like, 'This could be it. I could never be anything but that.' And for a lot of people, I won't. I was like, 'Ah, maybe I'm going to be forced to go do something different. And maybe this f***ng thing that I got forced into doing as a kid that I didn't f****** want to do in the first place, I'm out. And I'm free.' And then it didn't happen."

Bale kicked off his career in the executive suite as the adolescent Jamie Graham in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun." He is magnificent in the film, which remains the director's most underrated work (I happen to think it's his best movie), but, aside from a nifty turn in Kenneth Branagh's "Henry V," his early-career performances feel uninspired. It wasn't until Todd Haynes' "Velvet Goldmine" that he seemed to embrace the craft.

But here he is kvetching to a GQ journalist that he'd happily do anything else but act. He made three movies over the last couple of years, which will certainly take it out of you, but if you're Christian Bale and you don't want to work, you can easily turn down a Marvel movie like "Thor: Love and Thunder." Methinks he doth protest too much. That said, I would pay good money to watch Bale hose down a dumpster out back of an East St. Louis Denny's.