Christian Bale reveals he got paid LESS than the makeup artists working on American Psycho despite being the star of the horror film: 'They had paid me the absolute minimum' 

He is still remembered for his role of Patrick Bateman, the murderous investment banker and lead character in the 2003 film American Psycho.  

But Christian Bale has now revealed he got paid even less than the makeup artists working on the film.

In an interview with GQ, Bale, 48, recalled getting laughed at by makeup artists over the pay gap and claimed he was being paid the legally minimum amount. 

'They had paid me the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me,' he told the magazine. 'And I had a house that I was sharing with my dad and my sister and that was getting repossessed.

'So the first thing was: "Holy crap. I’ve got to get a bit of money," because I’ve got American Psycho done, but I remember one time sitting in the make-up trailer and the make-up artists were laughing at me because I was getting paid less than any of them.

'And so that was my motivation after that. It was just: "I got to get enough that the house doesn't get repossessed."'

During the wide-ranging interview with GQ, Bale revealed the role of Patrick Bateman was first offered to Leonardo DiCaprio before the Titanic actor dropped out.  

Bale claimed DiCaprio gets first dibs on every major male movie role in Hollywood. 

The Batman actor said that 'to this day, any role that anybody gets, it’s only because he's passed on it beforehand'. 

Bale added that he and other actors in the 47-year-old Titanic star's age range owe their careers to him: 'I would suspect that almost everybody of similar age to him in Hollywood owes their careers to him passing on whatever project it is.'

'It doesn’t matter what anyone tells you. It doesn’t matter how friendly you are with the directors. All those people that I’ve worked with multiple times, they all offered every one of those roles to him first,' the English actor added.

'I had one of those people actually tell me that. So, thank you, Leo, because literally, he gets to choose everything he does. And good for him, he’s phenomenal.'

The conversation came about when interviewer Zach Baron brought up the fact that DiCaprio - who started out in the movie business as a child just like Bale, and is only 10 months younger than him - was first cast in the 2000 film American Psycho ahead of Bale.

Though Bale eventually ended up starring as Patrick after DiCaprio dropped out, he had apparently lost five other movie roles to him in the 90's, including Titanic. 

Bale stressed 'it's not just me' and that every male lead is first offered to the Gatsby actor.

Asked whether he took it personally, Bale replied: 'No. Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing? I mean, I can’t do what he does. I wouldn’t want the exposure that he has either.'

He offered further words of praise to the Los Angeles native, adding: 'He does it magnificently.' 

There are conflicting stories on why DiCaprio exited American Psycho, with one theory being that he had creative differences with Oliver Stone, who was set to direct the movie at the time.

Another theory by the film’s co-writer Guinevere Turner revealed that it might have been a meeting with Gloria Steinem, who didn't approve of the violence against women in the film, that made DiCaprio drop out. 

'My friend, who had just spoken to Gloria Steinem, said that Gloria Steinem took Leonardo DiCaprio to a Yankees game. I believe, she said, "Please don’t do this movie. Coming off of Titanic, there is an entire planet full of 13-year-old girls waiting to see what you do next, and this is going to be a movie that has horrible violence toward women,"' she recalled in an interview with Vice in 2020. 

Among other roles Bale reportedly lost to DiCaprio are This Boy’s Life (1993) and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).  

Elsewhere in the GQ interview Bale revealed that he acted as a 'mediator' between Amy Adams and David O. Russell on the contentious set of the 2013 crime comedy American Hustle.

Years ago a leaked email from the Sony hacks alleged that David 'abused' Amy to the point where Christian had to step in. She herself has since described feeling 'devastated' on the set of the film 'most' days.

Now Christian confirmed previous claims that he got involved when tensions broke out between Amy and her director: 'If I can have some sense of understanding of where it's coming from, then I do tend to attempt to be a mediator,' Christian claimed.

'That's just in my nature, to try to say: "Hey, come on, let's go and sit down and figure that out. There's gotta be a way of making this all work."'