Christian Bale was attacked by angry red ants when a stunt on the set of his new film Rescue Dawn went too far. The star agreed to hang upside down with his face buried in an ants’ nest for a torture scene in the film, in which he plays a real-life prisoner of war.
But things got scary for the actor when a Thai crewmember misunderstood director Werner Herzog’s call to get his star out of trouble.
Bale recalls, “One of the guys stepped forward and he started spinning me and I was spinning pretty fast. I was upside down so the blood is rushing to your head anyway and then Werner actually said, ‘OK enough.’
“This guy took it to mean ‘More,’ so he jumped in and span me and he span me and I’m going so damn fast that I couldn’t stand up for a good half hour after that. It was the real ants crawling all over my head and biting me as well. That wasn’t a good day… I could’ve done without that.”
With sealed lips being the mantra of the day on “The Dark Knight” set, info on the next edition of the “Batman” franchise is hard to come by. That’s why we were happy to get anything out of star Christian Bale, who confirmed to MTV News that Heath Ledger’s take on The Joker will be decidedly darker than previous versions of the iconic villain.
“I think I should let Heath give you the answer on all this,” Bale said, before stating that “certainly I think that we dig a little more than the other movies did.” That means that fans shouldn’t expect to see The Joker dancing to Prince, as Jack Nicholson did in Tim Burton’s 1989 film. “We recognize, of course, they are cartoon characters, [but] we try to ground them in somewhat more reality than the other movies.”
According to the “Rescue Dawn” actor, though, one thing’s for sure…clowns are scary. “There’s a word for it, isn’t there?” Bale asked of Coulrophobia, or an intense fear of clowns. “It’s a wonderful word. Most kids are terrified of the bloody things.”
