Christian Bale Once Revealed He Butted Heads With David O. Russell in ‘American Hustle’

Christian Bale has worked alongside controversial filmmaker David O. Russell on a couple of projects. But because of their strong personalities, the pair couldn’t help clash every now and then behind the scenes.

Christian Bale and David O. Russell were used to butting heads

Russell is known for his hot temper almost as much as he’s known for his filmmaking. The director has even thrown tantrums with the actors he’s worked with. His American Hustle co-star Amy Adams once confided that she ended up crying because of Russell’s attitude towards her. Clooney, who worked with Russell on Three Kings, also had a physical altercation with the director because of his behavior.

On occasion, he’s even found himself fighting with his frequent collaborator Christian Bale. But Bale confided their conflict only helped strengthen their projects.

“David and I butt heads at times, absolutely, but we enjoy that because it’s about honesty. There’s no sulking allowed. We bounce straight back from it. They are the best of times and there are other times when people are going [when they butt heads], ‘Clear the set!’ But it makes for a real vibrancy with the filming,” Bale once told Inquirer.

Meanwhile, Russell revealed he never intentionally created hostile environments in the movies he works on. And he’d prefer everyone got along on set.

“All you want to do is move forward and have the most positive, loving set you can possibly have. I don’t want to have one shred of anything other than that. You have to have an environment that feels extremely safe and loving and collective, and that’s how we did The Fighter, and that’s how we did this picture,” Russell said in an interview with Vanity Fair.

Christian Bale couldn’t get into character the way David O. Russell wanted him to in ‘The Fighter’

One of the earlier projects Bale and Russell collaborated on was the biographical sports drama The Fighter. The feature saw Bale portraying retired boxer Dicky Ecklund, a role that he once again reshaped his body for. To get into character, Bale was constantly on the move.

“I felt so good and calm with playing Dicky and I was just running like crazy. I could just run for hours on end and I felt really healthy. I don’t know. Usually I always say how I do a lot of coke whenever I lose weight. I’m not sure if that’s so funny for this movie but there’s not a whole lot of secrets to it,” Bale once told Collider.

When it was time for Bale to be Dicky on set, Russell expected him to just turn on and off the character. But Bale asserted that wasn’t how his process went.

“David would say a couple of times, ‘O.K., be Dicky,’ and that’s just not the way I work,” Bale once told The New York Times. “I kind of slowly do it, like a frog that you stick in cold water and slowly turn up the heat so it never knows it’s being boiled alive. Eventually it’s just happening but it’s vague, the line where you started. And when you’ve done it that way, it can take a bit of time to wear off.”

Christian Bale is just getting started with David O. Russell

Bale and Russell might become a new actor-director duo. Their most recent film together was the star-studded Amsterdam. But Bale was confident that wouldn’t be the last project they collaborated on.

“It’s a very unique experience,” Bale told IndieWire not too long ago. “David is unlike any other film director, and that’s what you want. That’s the whole point. A director brings a point of view, and a rhythm and everything, and the great ones are always unique. They’re singular. And David is that. Truly one of the greats.”