10 Obviously Uninsurable Actors Who Insist On Doing Their Own Stunts
5. Christian Bale
Not content with the obvious health risk of yo-yoing your body weight from one extreme to another, as he did when he dropped to 121 pounds for The Machinist before bulking right back up again for the Batman movies, Christian Bale also prefers to perform his own stunts whenever his insurance company will allow him. In addition to performing all the hand to hand combat scenes himself, Bale - like director Christopher Nolan - believes that practical effects should be used wherever possible instead of CGI, and he'd built up plenty of pugilistic experience playing the role of Batman. By the time he came to shoot The Dark Knight he felt more than comfortable performing Keysi martial arts: "It's a very instinctive kind of martial art. It's not about choreography; it's very much about using your adrenaline and becoming an animal in your fighting style." Bale is more than happy to admit that he leaves the more dangerous stunts to the professionals, but when it came to doing his own stunts for The Fighter, it turned out the insurance guys had had enough. Bale said of their decision, I just got up there and I went, Im jumping ...Ive jumped from three-story buildings in my own life after bad parties and stuff. The insurance came around ...and they were just begging me not to. We're sure readers would love to see the evidence of him jumping from the third story as much as the rest of us.
