Christian Bale once described acting as a 'disgusting vanity-fueled profession'

Christian Bale may be one of the most respected actors of his generations, but he’s previously admitted to hating the industry at times, branding it ‘disgusting’ and ‘vanity fuelled’. Ouch.

The 49-year-old star has a lengthy and impressive resume with roles in American Psycho, Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, American Hustle, and The Fighter, for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor.

Bale is very well-known for going above and beyond for a role, dropping a reported 63lbs to play insomniac factory worker Trevor Reznik in 2004 psychological thriller, The Machinist.

Talking about the gruelling process, he said: "The main point was that somehow losing all the physical weight put all the energy into my brain and so I only slept two hours a night and all I wanted to do was read.

"And so I would just sit and read endlessly and I found that I could read without stopping or moving or needing a distraction. I could just sit and read for 10 hours straight without moving a muscle."

Paramount Pictures

Bale then completely overhauled his body once again to play muscular millionaire Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins in 2004 - going from one physical extreme to another in the space of around five months.

He also managed to somehow turn himself into a dead ringer for former vice president Dick Cheney in Vice.

However, despite his seemingly unwavering dedication to nailing a role, it seems that Bale has had a bit of a love/hate relationship with his chosen career path.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2013, Bale admitted that when he loves his job, he really loves it, but when he’s not as enamoured, he really, really hates it.

Hyperstar / Alamy Stock Photo

He said: “[Acting] became something I felt like I had to do. You can’t enjoy something when you’re actually — not being forced to do it — but you feel that duty and obligation that if you don’t a lot of people are going to suffer. And so it became that, and it’s always been a love-hate thing for me because of that, you know?

"When I love it, I love it. When I hate it, I just can’t. It’s just disgusting, this vanity-fuelled profession. I just can’t stand it. I can’t stand the people, and I hate them all. And I hate the films, and I don’t want to see a film again in my life.

"And then I’ll find something and I’ll go, ‘Yeah, forget everything I just said. I want to go back in. I want to go back into it.’ But it’s always like that for me. It’s a very black-and-white thing.”