Christian Bale says he only has a career as Leonardo DiCaprio passed up so many film roles

6 October 2022

Christian Bale says he only has a career because Leonardo DiCaprio has passed up so many film roles.

Christian Bale says he only has a career because Leonardo DiCaprio has passed up so many film roles

The 48-year-old actor added “any role that anybody gets” is only because Leo, 47, doesn’t want them as he always gets first choice of Hollywood movie parts.

Christian told the new issue of GQ magazine: “I would suspect that almost everybody of similar age to him in Hollywood owes their careers to him passing on whatever project it is.

“It doesn’t matter what anyone tells you. It doesn’t matter how friendly you are with the directors.

“All those people that I’ve worked with multiple times – they all offered every one of those roles to him first.

“I had one of those people actually tell me that. So, thank you, Leo, because literally, he gets to choose everything he does. And good for him, he’s phenomenal.”

Leo was first cast as Patrick Bateman in the 2000 film ‘American Psycho’ ahead of Christian – who is also said to have lost five other roles to the ‘Titanic’ actor throughout the 1990s, including parts in ‘This Boy’s Life’ alongside Robert De Niro and ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ with Johnny Depp.

Christian, who shares two children with his former model wife Sandra ‘Sibi’ Blažić, 52, insisted he does not take it personally as it’s “not just me”, adding: “No. Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing? I mean, I can’t do what he does. I wouldn’t want the exposure that he has either.”

Rumours about why Leo is said to have passed on ‘American Psycho’ range from him having creative differences with Oliver Stone, 68, who was originally set to direct the film, and that he met with Gloria Steinem, 88, who disapproved of the “horrible violence” against women in the movie.

The film’s co-writer Guinevere Turner, 54, who penned the script with its director Mary Harron, 69, told Vice in 2020: “My friend, who had just spoken to Gloria Steinem, said that Gloria Steinem took Leonardo DiCaprio to a Yankees game.

“I believe she said, ‘Please don’t do this movie. Coming off of ‘Titanic’, there is an entire planet full of 13-year-old girls waiting to see what you do next, and this is going to be a movie that has horrible violence toward women’.”