Christian Bale unrecognisable following Dick Cheney role weight gain

Christian Bale seems to have become more avuncular thanks to the many pounds he’s gained for his role playing former vice president Dick Cheney.

Here he is looking noticeably chunky at a photo-call for ‘Hostiles’, his next movie to hit screens, in which he plays an army captain in the 1890s who’s escorting a dying Native American chief and his family back to his tribal lands.

That movie is directed and written by Oscar-winner Scott Cooper, and also stars Wes Studi, Rosamund Pike, Ben Foster and Jesse Plemons, and is due out on December 29.

But the movie for which he boasts this girthy physique finds him once again teams up with ‘The Big Short’ director Adam McKay for ‘Backseat’.

Bale plays Cheney, the controversial and much maligned former vice president under George W. Bush, opposite Amy Adams as his wife Lynne Cheney.

Also on the bill are Steve Carell as former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Pullman as Nelson Rockefeller, Tyler Perry as secretary of state Colin Powell, and Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush.

Speaking about how he’d stacked it on for the part, Bale said at the Toronto International Fil Festival in September: “I’ve just been eating a lot of pies.”

That’s the spirit.

It’s not the first time Bale has yo-yo dieted for a role. He bulked up considerably to play the Dark Knight in Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies.

But he famously shed a worrying 65 pounds for his role as skeletal insomniac Trevor Reznik in 2004’s ‘The Machinist’.

He also lost a significant amount of weight to play boxer and trainer Dicky Eklund for David O. Russell’s ‘The Fighter’ in 2010. He later packed it all back on for David O Russell’s ‘American Hustle’, gaining 43 lbs to play conman Irving Rosenfeld.

He probably prefers it this way around, mind.

‘Backseat’ is yet to confirm a release date.

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