Christian Bale is good at looking like someone else. He puts his body through all kinds of awful things to bulk up, slim down, get fit, get fat and more for roles that always seem really badly timed (did he really need to shoot Rescue Dawn in between two Batman movies?). Healthy or not, he’s doing it again for Adam McKay’s Vice, a biopic of former US Vice President Dick Cheney.
To make things harder on Bale, Vice follows Cheney through two different periods of his career – from young(ish) Washington grafter to the much older (much fleshier) man holding George W Bush’s puppet strings.
Calling on Bale to play two different ages of the same middle-aged man, Bale had to shave his head, bleach his eyebrows and gain 40 pounds to give the hair and makeup artists enough to work with.
Annapurna pictures has now the first photo of Bale in costume as the younger Cheney:
And, even more remarkably, as the older Cheney:
“What Christian Bale really does is he psychologically breaks someone apart and puts them back together again,” McKay told Deadline. “I’ve never seen someone work so hard at it, and it is hard on him, but really amazing to watch. The second I thought of doing the movie, I knew right away, the most exciting person to play him is Christian.”
The film also stars Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney, Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, Sam Rockwell as Bush, Bill Pullman as Nelson Rockerfeller and Tyler Perry as Colin Powell. Bale is reuniting with McKay after starring in his 2016 financial crisis comedy, The Big Short.
Bale has also confirmed that Vice is not going to be a straightforward biopic, and that the role of Cheney has been one of the most challenging of his career. “It’s taken as much research as I’ve ever had to do for any other film,” he told Interview. “Adam likes a lot of improvisation, and when you’re playing Mr. Cheney, you need to not only speak in the vernacular that he would speak in, but all the policies that he would be aware of and instances of them, the abbreviations for all of them, and be able to just go with it. So it was very fascinating for me.”
But why tell Cheney’s story now, when American politics is going through an even tougher time than it did back in the 00s?
“Someone had to crack the safe first. Someone who understood power and how to manipulate it. Someone no one would notice. An ultimate insider who knew every trick in the book,” McKay told Vanity Fair. “America didn’t get to the delightful place we’re at today by accident…”
Vice is expected to arrive in UK cinemas in early 2019.