Christian Bale has revealed that it was a difficult decision for him to sign on to play Batman.
The actor took on the role of Bruce Wayne aka Batman back in 2005 when Christopher Nolan brought the franchise back to the big screen.
It was more of a mainstream role for Bale, who was famed for his more off beat characters, but he was worried that people wouldn’t like his interpretation of the character.
Speaking to Esquire magazine the actor said: "All I knew was that there was a whole lot more there that I'd never seen and there was some extreme in the interpretation that should be taken.
"So I just said, 'I just gotta hope that they're gonna go with that, and if they don't, that's not the version I'd like to be involved with anyway'."
But the actor believes that he made the right decision about how he wanted to portray Bruce Wayne.
"And it's that perverse thing in life, where when you're able to achieve a certain recklessness, you actually end up getting good results," he added.
"You have to throw everything aside and say, 'What the hell, I'm gonna do it this way, and if they don't like it, I wanna do it anyway'. It avoids that anxiety of 'How do I manipulate this and fake it so that people believe me?' That's never gonna work. So that's the kind of abandonment you gotta have."
A sequel followed in 2008 and went on to gross in excess of $1 billion to become the most successful comic book movie of all time.
And Bale is set to return to the character as The Dark Knight Rises, the third film in the franchise, is due to begin filming in the new year.
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