Christian Bale’s career took a remarkable turn, thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio. According to the actor, his rise to fame came after DiCaprio declined to accept parts in important movies. “Look, to this day, any role that anybody gets, it’s only because he’s passed on it beforehand,” Bale jokingly told GQ in an interview.

“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,” he assures.

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“So, thank you, Leo, because literally, he gets to choose everything he does,” Bale concluded. “And good for him, he’s phenomenal.”

According to Bale, he doesn’t care when casting directors give preference to DiCaprio on projects. “No. Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing? I mean, I can’t do what he does,” Bale shared. “And he does it magnificently. But I would suspect that almost everybody of similar age to him in Hollywood owes their careers to him passing on whatever project it is.”

One of Bale’s most prominent roles came after Leonardo DiCaprio rejected the lead in American Psycho. According to the publication, Bale was able to take on the role. “They had paid me the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me,” he said. “I remember one time sitting in the makeup trailer, and the makeup artists were laughing at me because I was getting paid less than any of them.”

Bale claimed that “nobody wanted me to do” the role at the time; therefore, his paycheck wasn’t as juicy as it was supposed to be. “They said they would only make it if they could pay me that amount,” Bale continued. “I was prepping for it when other people were playing the part. I was still prepping for it. And, you know, it moved on. I lost my mind. But I won it back.”