Christian Bale regrets doing 'Terminator: Salvation' as much as we regret watching it

Christian Bale doesn’t often make poor movie choices but he readily admits that starring in Terminator: Salvation was a massive error.

The British actor played the role of John Connor in the sequel to Terminator 2: Judgement Day and said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast how much he regrets it, especially after turning it down several times.

“I said no three times,” Bale explains. “I thought that the franchise…I went ‘Nah, there’s no story there.’ I’d seen the first one and enjoyed that back in England, I’d been to the movies and seen the second one. It was an unfortunate series of events involving the writers’ strike, involving [Jonathan] Nolan, who was able to come on, and really start to write a wonderful script, but then got called away for a prior commitment that he had.”

“And it’s a great thorn in my side, because I wish we could have reinvigorated [the franchise]. And unfortunately, during production, you could tell that wasn’t happening. It’s a great shame.

The actor, who is currently promoted new movie Hostiles, says stubbornness was also a factor in him taking the role.

“There’s a perverse side to me, where people were telling me that, there’s no way on God’s Earth that I should take that role, and I was thinking the same thing,” Bale added. “But when people started verbalising that to me, I started to go, ‘Oh really? All right, well watch this then.’ So there was a little bit of that involved in the choice.”

The movie also played host to his infamous meltdown during the shoot; a recording of the actor screaming at director of photography Shane Hurlbut was leaked online and went viral.

“That was a very unusual occasion,” Bale said. “Great learning lesson for me. Do you remember that scene with Linda Hamilton where she’s really going nuts in ‘Terminator 2’? We said, we’ve got to channel that at some point in the film, and that was the scene in which we were channeling it.

“Great lesson for me of, no matter how much you lose yourself in a scene, you do not allow yourself to behave that way. And yeah, of course I’ve got enormous regrets about it.”

Hostiles is in UK cinemas now

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