Christian Bale Gains Weight and Dyes His Eyebrows Blonde for Upcoming Dick Cheney Biopic

The Oscar-winner, 43, debuted the chubbier look this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival

Photo: Vivien Killilea/Getty; Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty

Christian Bale is once again undergoing a dramatic weight transformation — this time for a role as none other than former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Oscar-winner, 43, debuted the chubbier look this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival, where he was in town to premier his upcoming movie Hostiles.

Bale, who also had his eyebrows dyed blonde to more closely resemble the polarizing politician, is starring as Cheney in the upcoming biopic Backseat. The film also stars Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney, Sam Rockwell as former President George W. Bush, Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld and Bill Pullman as Nelson Rockefeller.

The British actor has a long history of fluctuating his weight and appearance for roles. He famously lost 70 pounds for his role in 2004’s The Machinist, finally weighing in at just 120 pounds. He then gained the weight back, plus another 30 pounds of muscle, to play Batman in the Christopher Nolan trilogy beginning in 2005.

Christian Bale in The Machinist. Nicolas Geller/Paramount Classics/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

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He also won an Oscar for playing a heroin addict in 2010’s The Fighter, for which he also lost a considerable amount of weight. Then three years later, he was spotted sporting a pot belly for his role in 2013’s American Hustle.

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Adam McKay, who worked with Bale on the Oscar award-winning film The Big Short in 2015, wrote the screenplay for Backseat and will also direct the film.

“I’ve always found Cheney fascinating,” McKay told Deadline last fall. “Questions of what drove him, what his beliefs were. But once we started digging, I was astounded at how much he had shaped modern America’s place in the world and how shocking the methods were by which he gained his power.”