Every Christian Bale Movie, Ranked
Updated January 2023.
With the arrival of Ford v Ferrari this week, the famously "difficult" and intense Academy Award-winning British actor Christian Bale has now appeared in (or lent his voice to) 45 feature films, dating back to his debut as a teenager in 1987.
In the gallery above, we rank most of those films from worst to best, minus 1989's Henry V (in which he barely appears) and a pair of minor European films (1987's Mio in the Land of Faraway and 1994's Royal Deceit) which never screened or received reviews in the United States. Also excluded are three animated films in which Bale provided voices (Mowgli, Howl's Moving Castle, and Pocahontas).
Arguably the closest thing to a comedy in Bale's filmography at the time (at least until Amsterdam nearly a decade later), this 2013 best picture nominee found Bale working with director David O. Russell for a second time (following The Fighter), with even better results. Based loosely on the true story of an elaborate FBI sting operation in the late 1970s and '80s, American Hustle finds Bale—with an added gut, intentionally terrible hairpiece, and Bronx accent—playing a con man, who is enlisted (along with his partner, played by Amy Adams) by an FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) in an attempt to take down some New Jersey mafia figures and corrupt politicians. Bale picked up his second Oscar nomination (and first in a leading role) but lost the trophy to Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club).
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