Christian Bale says he said no to Terminator Salvation three times. Photo / AP
Christian Bale says he said no to Terminator Salvation three times. Photo / AP
Christian Bale has made some amazing films including American Hustle, The Fighter and of course the Batman trilogy.
But in his illustrious career there's one movie in particular that the actor regrets saying yes to.
As the 43-year-old revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he wishes he had passed on his 2009 flick Terminator Salvation.
The movie has just a 33 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was panned by critics, with Time Out describing it as "a shambolic, deafening, intelligence-insulting mess, a crushing failure on almost all counts".
"I said no three times," Bale said to podcast host Josh Horowitz, before revealing one of the reasons he changed his mind.
"There's a perverse side to me where people were telling me there's no way on God's Earth that I should take that role and I was thinking the same thing. But when people started verbalising that to me, I started to go, 'Oh really? All right, well watch this then!' So there was a little bit of that involved in the choice."
Bale blamed "an unfortunate series of events" for the lacklustre movie and said "it's a great shame" and "a great thorn in my side".
Christian Bale and Sam Worthington in Terminator Salvation. Photo / supplied
Most people probably remember Terminator Salvation more for the leaked tape of Bale's on set rant at the director of photography rather than the film itself.
The actor went ballistic when Shane Hurlbut mistakenly walked into Bale's eye line during a scene and yelled "I'm going to kick your f**king a**" and threatened to quit the movie unless the director of photography was fired.
Not long after audio of the incident went viral, Bale apologised in a radio interview saying he was "out of order beyond belief".
"I make no excuses for it. There is nobody who has heard that tape who has been hit harder than me. The one thing that disturbs me so much is that I've heard a lot of people saying that I seem to think that I'm better than anybody else.
"Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am a lucky man, I never forget that and that is why I put so much into what I do and why I care so much about it and why sometimes that enthusiasm just goes awry."
The Oscar nominated star spoke about the infamous rant on the Happy Sad Confused podcast and said he still has "enormous regrets" about it.
"It's a great learning lesson for me of no matter how much you lose yourself in a scene, that you do not allow yourself to behave that way.
"People still make fun of me to this day," he said, "and I deserve it."
Bale is currently looking a little chunkier than usual thanks to his upcoming role as former US Vice President Dick Cheney.
The film, Backseat, due out later this year, also stars Steve Carell as former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and Sam Rockwell as George W Bush.
