Last night was also the big premiere for The Fighter, that “based on a true story” film about “Irish” Mickey Ward and his crackhead brother Dicky Eklund. Mark Wahlberg plays the boxer, and Christian Bale is crack-tinged Oscar-bait as Dicky Eklund. These are photos from the premiere – Christian brought his wife Sybil and Mark brought his wife Rhea (who is gorgeous, and really, really tall). Also there: Amy Adams, who plays Mark’s love interest in the film, and this was one of her first red carpets since having a baby – she looks gorgeous too.

Anyway, out of the whole cast, Bale is the one likely to be the centerpiece of a big Oscar campaign. That means he’s got to dial down the surly jagoff and talk more about his process, including his stunning physical transformation to play Dicky:

It takes a lot of training to be a boxer, and sometimes, even more to train one. Christian Bale, no stranger to epic weight loss, shed major pounds again for his role in the upcoming film, ‘The Fighter.’

Speaking to Latino Review, Bale said that to play the gaunt trainer Dicky Eklund, he, “was just running like crazy. I could just run for hours on end and I felt really healthy.” But did he get a little extra boost? “Oh I do a lot of coke whenever I lose weight,” he joked, clarifying, “I’m not sure if it’s so funny for this movie, to say that.”

While Bale slimmed down, his co-stars had to bulk up. Leading man Mark Wahlberg, who plays boxer “Irish” Mickey Ward, did a lot of boxing – for quite a long time.

“The movie was a go then it fell apart and I just continued to train” he said. “So after four and a half, well, three and a half years, I felt confident enough to go in there and be believable as a boxer who could possibly win the welterweight title.”

Though he still has the boxing ring he trained with in his home, it isn’t getting much use.

“As far as the regimen, my new regimen consists of a bottle of red wine and a lot of food,” Wahlberg told the site. “And I’m enjoying myself, but my wife is like, you know, ‘You – you’re starting to look really bad.'”

And as for his onscreen wife, played by Amy Adams? She was ready to rumble.

“I looked like a girl who couldn’t punch, which made me want to punch him,” she said of director, David O. Russell. “So I actually took just a couple boxing lessons, and that was fun, with Mark’s trainer, who was fantastic. And then we just did some fight choreography. That was my biggest concern. I didn’t want to hurt the girl that I was fighting.”

[From Huffington Post]

Bale has done this whole “radical physical transformation” too many times, in my opinion. I mean, I get it, he’ll do anything for the craft, he’ll do anything to make the character authentic. But I also kind of wonder if Bale has issues, I guess. We’ll see – my guess is that Bale screws up his Oscar chances somehow. Granted, I think he’ll get the nomination (for Best Supporting Actor), but I think he’ll mouth off to the wrong journalist or he’ll just pitch a fit at the glad-handing needed to campaign for an Oscar.

Photos courtesy of WENN.