No Joke, Christian Bale Looks Unrecognizable as Dick Cheney in the New ‘Vice’ Trailer
Watch out, Selina Meyer. There’s a new veep in town, and this one’s based on a real person.
Christian Bale (The Big Short) stars in the forthcoming film, Vice, which tells the story of how former vice president Dick Cheney changed “the mostly symbolic job” forever. Oh, and just a heads up, you probably won’t recognize him.
The biopic tracks Cheney’s shift from CEO of energy management company Halliburton and government bureaucrat under former Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush to his time as George W. Bush’s historic vice president.
As the trailer reveals, Cheney was hesitant to step down from his high-powered position at Halliburton to join Bush’s cabinet, so he casually asked for power over “more mundane jobs” like “overseeing bureaucracy, military, energy and foreign policy.”
Bale underwent an intense physical transformation for the film, bleaching his eyebrows, gaining 40 pounds and shaving his head. This isn’t the first time Bale has switched up his look for the sake of cinema, but it is the most startling.
The Adam McKay (The Big Short)–directed film also stars Amy Adams (Sharp Objects) as wife Lynne Cheney, Steve Carell (Beautiful Boy) as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) as President George W. Bush and Tyler Perry (the Madea movies) as former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Vice hits theaters on December 25.