Christian Bale Once Shared Hank Williams Inspired Him to Lose Weight in ‘The Machinist’ [Video]

Christian Bale lost a tremendous amount of weight to portray his character in The Machinist. But after reading the script, he’d later find inspiration for his weight loss in late country music star Hank Williams.

Christian Bale went to extreme lengths to capture his Machinist character. In the 2004 film, he played a malnourished blue-collar worker experiencing a possible psychotic break. When he read the script, he already began envisioning what this character would look like in his head. And it soon became important for the Oscar winner to appear beyond unhealthy for the sake of the role.

“The more I read the script the more I realized this doesn’t work unless he looks like he’s at death’s door,” Bale once said according to Contact Music. “He can’t look like he’s a little bit skinny. You go out in the street – not so much in the States but in …