Christian Bale’s Terminator Salvation On-Set Rant: The True Story
During the production of 2009 sequel Terminator Salvation, lead actor Christian Bale was caught on tape having a meltdown, and here's what happened. Bale is a very talented actor. That's not in dispute, and is readily attested to by the myriad of acting awards on his mantle, including an Oscar. Bale has played lots of memorable characters, including but definitely not limited to American Psycho's yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman, drug addicted-former boxer Dicky Eklund in The Fighter, and Batman himself in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.
Bale is an actor capable of drawing attention to a project merely by agreeing to appear in it, and he's shown himself to be extremely versatile, and willing to transform his body in amazing ways to fit a particular role. This was seen most recently in 2018 satirical Dick Cheney biopic Vice, in which Bale packed on the pounds for his portrayal of George W. Bush's vice president.
Considering Bale's reputation, when he signed on to star as a grizzled adult John Connor in 2009's Terminator Salvation, many fans rejoiced. Surely an actor of Bale's caliber wouldn't board the franchise follow-up if it didn't have a good script. While the final film earned mostly rejection from fans, its production ended up earning Bale attention for all the wrong reasons.
In February 2009, a few months before Terminator Salvation debuted in theaters, an audio recording of Christian Bale surfaced publicly. The recording, clearly made without the actor's knowledge, contained audio of an angry on-set rant by Bale during filming in New Mexico back in July 2008. In the rant, Bale verbally goes off on the film's cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, who had walked onto set to check a light during the filming of a scene. This was apparently the second time he had done this, and Bale became incensed, hitting Hurlbut with a deluge of f-bombs, as well as threatening to smash his lighting equipment.
What's worse, Bale actually threatened to quit the film if Hurlbut committed this offense one more time without being subsequently fired. For his part Hurlbut was very apologetic on the recording, but then again, he couldn't well get into a shouting match with Terminator Salvation's star. Bale's rant earned the actor a large backlash, although some in show business did defend his complaint.
Bale ended up publicly apologizing for the incident, noting as well that he had settled his differences with Hurlbut that day, and the two continued to work together for the remainder of the production. Notably though, the two men haven't worked on the same project since. Amusingly, the mostly forgettable Terminator Salvation has since faded from the minds of many fans, and Bale's combative on-set behavior may now be its best known aspect.