10 Actors Who Took A Ridiculously Long Time To Prepare For Iconic Roles

5. Christian Bale - American Psycho

Time Spent Preparing: A year and a half Most actors, when turned down for a part, simply have to accept it and move on to other projects. Not so Christian Bale, who got the American Psycho gig (playing Wall Street sociopath and yuppie scum Patrick Bateman) in 1997 and was replaced by Leonardo DiCaprio in 1998, just as Bale was about to start shooting with director Mary Harron. Instead of forgetting about the part, though, Bale continued to prepare and turn down other projects for nine whole months, confident he would be rehired - which he eventually was, on the proviso that the film's budget was significantly lowered. In the space of a year and a half, as he was dropped then rehired and as shooting was constantly delayed, Bale trained (several hours down the gym every day), perfected the accent, took character-building inspiration from Tom Cruise (to play Bateman, Bale adopted Cruise's "very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes") and personally warned other circling actors off the project, including Ewan McGregor. Bale even took to performing Bateman's regular morning routine.