Christian Bale Reveals He ‘Can’t Keep’ Going Through Extreme Body Changes: ‘My Mortality is Staring Me in the Face’

One tough job! Christian Bale, who has become known for putting his body on the line for his acting craft, has revealed that he may not be doing that as often moving forward.

The 44-year-old chatted it up with The Sunday Times, and while the interview took a lot of different turns, the main focus was on the actor’s most recent film, Vice, and how his latest body change is the one that’s made him question if he wants to continue to put his health on the line. “I did a lot of fattening up on my neck,” Christian said, speaking about the lengths he had to go to play Dick Cheney in the film, a role he had to gain a ton of weight for. “They’d tell me the right kinds of foods to eat to gain weight without, er, dying,” the Oscar winner said of visiting a doctor prior to changing his body.

“In the midst of that, I called Gary Oldman, who’d just played Churchill. I said, ‘Gary, how much weight did you put on?’ He told me he didn’t put on any,” the Batman Begins star revealed. “By this time, I’m 20 [pounds] in. I said, ‘Wait, none?’ I felt like such a tit, but I thought, ‘I’m on this road, I’m going to keep going.’ But I can’t keep doing it. I really can’t. My mortality is staring me in the face.”

Aside from Vice, Christian has also gone through big-time transformations for roles in The Fighter and American Hustle. And through it all his wife of 19 years, Sibi Blazic, has stood by his side. “You’ve got to feel sorry for my wife,” he said. “And she still tells me she loves me. She deserves trophies. No matter what happens, my wife’s seen it. She saw The Machinist. She saw Cheney. She saw the Batman stuff. She’s seen bald, bearded. There’s nothing under the sun she can’t handle.”

Christian continued, “But, there are definitely [characters] where my wife and kids are, like, ‘Thank God that one’s gone. You weirdo. We want him out of the house.’ And others where they say, ‘We like that one better than you.’” And yet, his youngest child, Joseph, 4, was all about the Vice look. “My son loved the tummy,” he revealed. “He would bounce up and down on it.”

Even though the actor feels his weight changes are harmful, he knows exactly what would happen if he quit doing it. “I’d give more crap performances,” he joked, adding, “I only feel comfortable if I have an awful lot of knowledge to fall back on. My technique is, I don’t really know what to do, so I just figure it out.” And he better figure out an Oscar speech, because many people believe he may have to give one very soon.