Christian Bale's method acting once helped save a director's life

Christian Bale is famous for going to terrifying lengths for his roles.

He's starved himself to a skeleton in The Machinist, ballooned to an unrecognizable size in American Hustle and even packed on a six pack to play Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. He's well and truly committed to the bit.

But nobody could have predicted that one of those deep dives would end up saving someone's life.

While preparing to play Dick Cheney in the 2018 in the political drama Vice, Bale did what Bale does best, he immersed himself completely in the role.

Adam McKay and Christian Bale worked together on Vice (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

That included researching every detail of Cheney's multiple heart attacks, and one throwaway conversation on set ended up lodging itself in director Director Adam McKay secretly put footage of his heart attack into his film 's brain at exactly the right moment.

Talking to Deadline, McKay recalled that during filming he was in poor physical shape, heavier than he wanted to be, smoking heavily, and fully aware he was running on borrowed time health-wise. His Doctor had given him several warnings but McKay had ignored them.

What are the real signs of a heart attack?

After wrapping Vice, he hired a personal trainer and started trying to turn things around - but on their third session together, something felt wrong.

In his own words, he said: "Our third workout, I get tingly hands and my stomach starts going queasy. I always thought when you get a heart attack, it’s pain in the chest or the arm."

But then he remembered something. During the shoot, Bale had asked McKay how he wanted him to play one of Cheney's heart attack scenes. McKay had assumed it was obvious: chest pain, arm pain, all the classics.

But Bale corrected him at the time: "No no, one of the more common ways is you get really queasy and your stomach hurts."

McKay hadn't thought about it again, until that moment he was doubled over in his gym, with tingly hands and a churning stomach.

"I went 'oh sh*t,'", he said.

Sam Rockwell, Amy Adams, Adam McKay, Christian Bale and Steve Carell at the Vice premiere (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic)

"either you or Dick Cheney just saved my life"

He ran upstairs, downed a handful of baby aspirin, called his wife who immediately called 911. He got to hospital fast. The Doctor told him that because he'd acted so quickly, his heart had suffered almost zero lasting damage.

"That's because I remembered what Christian Bale told me,' McKay added.

A small blockage in the lower part of his heart was cleared with a stent. A week later, McKay called Bale.

"I said, either you or Dick Cheney just saved my life," he said.

After checking McKay was genuinely okay, the pair apparently just burst out laughing.

McKay even snuck a tribute into the finished film, the actual footage of his blocked artery appears briefly on screen during a sequence about Cheney's paranoia. His cameo in his own movie is literally, his heart attack.

Since the episode, McKay has quit smoking and lost the weight he gained during filming, saying: "Nothing will get you to quit smoking faster, than staring at the ceiling of an ambulance."

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