Christian Bale Mistook Co-Star For A Stripper
Did Christian Bale mistake his co-star Teresa Palmer for a stripper? You bet! While filming the Terrence Malick film Knight of Cups, Bale admitted during an interview with Evening Standard that he didn’t make the best first impression with his co-star Teresa Palmer.
“We were filming in a strip club, and Teresa Palmer’s there in her little silver hot pants and I’m asking her how long she’d been dancing for? Does she enjoy it? What got her into it? I had no idea that she was an actress until about a week after working with her. Suddenly I saw a billboard with her face on it and I went ‘What?'”
In case anyone wants to see the woman that Christian Bale thought was a stripper, here she is:
That Time Christian Bale Thought Teresa Palmer Was A Stripper https://t.co/5YGhyg6h3r pic.twitter.com/BRct7EIWdK
— NewsCentral – Movies (@exsees_movies) December 4, 2015
And here she is in the hot pants that Bale was talking about:
Oops! Christian Bale Thought Teresa Palmer Was an Actual Stripper When Filming Knight of… https://t.co/rfaHuBdUGM pic.twitter.com/qZ7pJzHtrb
— SHOWBIZ Nigeria (@Extratainment) December 4, 2015
She looks convincing, but still, wouldn’t Bale be introduced to her during a table reading before the film shot? If this was a normal filmmaking experience, odds are Bale would have been introduced to his co-stars, but odds are slim to none that a table reading took place, as Malick is often very unorthodox with the way he goes about things.
As for Bale’s role in the film, The Dark Knight actor plays a man who is having an existential crisis after living with fame in Hollywood. Here’s the catch — the actor actually never got a copy of the actual script. Bale explains what happened when he got to set every day. “I never got any pages at all. I would just arrive and he would say, ‘Deal with it and see what happens.'”
As for the general theme about Hollywood, Bale explained that this film isn’t going to make fun of Hollywood or paint it in an unkind light.
“Hollywood is just a very colorful goldfish bowl in which to set the filmBut I think it applies globally. It’s about people with dreams and their desires. Rick feels empty and recognizes that he could keep going on this hamster wheel of wonderful parties and wonderful stories for ever. It’s a glamorous life on the outside but from the inside it holds no further interest any more. He’s done everything that he could do. Now what?”
Then again, knowing Malick’s knack for storytelling, you never know what he might put in his frame. Ben Affleck, who starred in Malick’s critically panned film To The Wonder, elaborated on his film process. Back in 2012, Affleck told GQ magazine of his experience working with Malick:
“The experience of it seemed half-crazy in that we didn’t really have dialogue, so I didn’t really know what was happening. Then I realized that he was accumulating colors that he would use to paint with later in the editing room. My character doesn’t really do that much.
“It was kind of a wash for me in terms of learning something as an actor, because Terry uses actors in a different way—he’ll [have the camera] on you and then tilt up and go up to a tree, so you think, ‘Who’s more important in this—me or the tree?’ But you don’t ask him, because you don’t want to know the answer.”
As for Bale, he’s been finished with Knight of Cups for years now. Production on the film took place in 2012, and then some thought that it was shelved after To The Wonder was panned by critics and famously booed. Film buffs were surprised that a trailer for the film came out of nowhere along with a March 2016 release date.
[Photo by Broad Green Pictures]
