Christian Bale
After one of his sister's was cast in a London stage production, Christian Bale was inspired to give acting a go and gets started with commercials and his own West End stage debut at 10 opposite Rowan Atkinson. Playing the young lead in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun in 1987 earned him a huge helping of critical praise, but the early fame made him shy away from the business. (His disinterest in celebrity, doing interviews or sharing his personal life still holds true today. In fact, he and wife Sibi Blazic still have not released his daughter's name and she was born in 2005.) He sang and danced in Newsies and Swing Kids before romancing the ladies of Little Women (and audiences) in 1994. He slowly but deftly moved from smaller roles to leading man gigs, memorably running naked with power tools in American Psycho, going period in Portrait of A Lady and Velvet Goldmine, fighting dragons in Reign Of Fire and dropping a third of his body weight (63 pounds) for The Machinist. Despite deftly tackling heavy-duty themes in films like Rescue Dawn and The Prestige, he will forever be most recognized for his time spent behind a mask in Christopher Nolan's Caped Crusader trilogy and for his 4-minute rant reprimanding a Terminator Salvation crew member, in which he dropped 36 F-bombs, that went viral in 2009. He poked fun at his internationally known potty mouth when he won the Best Supporting Oscar for playing troubled boxer Dicky Ecklund in The Fighter in 2011.
