CHRISTIAN BALE ENDURES TORTURE

Christian Bale had to endure several torture scenes playing POW aviator Dieter Dengler in Rescue Dawn. Filmed in Thailand they included spinning while hanging upside down, riding rapids, sliding down mudslides and getting dragged behind oxen.

Bale says the jungle natives were more concerned for his safety watching him go through these torture sequences but assured them he was just having a laugh.

“The ox wasn’t a challenge at all. That was actually very funny. I had to stop myself from laughing getting pulled around by the ox because the villagers that we were with, they didn’t understand what was going on. They actually, a couple of them tried to save me because they thought that I was genuinely being bullied by the rest of the film crew. I had to explain it’s alright, I’m actually happy to do this. But they didn’t understand why I would be doing that.”

Not all the torture scenes were fun and games as Christian explains.

“One of the actual worst things for me was a scene which is shown very briefly but it’s when he’s hanging upside down with the ant’s nest pointing in his face. And the reason was just because there was a miscommunication. One of the guys stepped forward and he started spinning me and I was spinning pretty fast. I was upside down so the blood is rushing to your head anyway and then Werner actually said, ‘OK enough.’ And the guy took it to mean ‘more’ so he jumped in and span me and he span me and I’m going so damn fast that I couldn’t stand up for a good half hour after that. And of course it was the real ants crawling all over my head and biting me. That wasn’t a good day that one. The rest of it I quite enjoyed but that I could’ve done without.”

Christian is currently shooting his next Batman adventure, The Dark Knight in Chicago. Rescue Dawn opens tomorrow in theaters.rn