Top directors don't want to worry about box office of a movie when they are making it because they are busy guaranteeing the quality of the movie. But they have to face the reality of business and a movie that flops at the box office has slim chance of winning any awards. This is one of the reasons why Universally loved actors like Pitt or Dicaprio are cast in such consistency by top directors. Alejandro Innaritu don't want to worry about revenant making money when he is busy trying to make it as good as it can be.
That leaves us actors like Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper etc. These actors are huge stars but their box office draw and track record is very spotty. So directors like scorsese or tarantino don't wanna take risk casting them in a 100 million $ movie that may be a great movie but will be deprived of all its awards potential if the movie flops. So they have to work with less consistent directors.
Actors can control only their performance. But the ideal scenario for an actor to get recognition for his performance is if a director is making a great movie and he decided to cast the actor because he fits a certain role. So its talent + luck. The lesser the luck the more consistent these actors become. Among these actors only christian bale reduces the luck to almost zero. That's because the roles he takes are extremely challenging even on paper. Take first man vs vice. Ryan gosling chose to do the movie because he fit the role of neil armstrong perfectly and his last collaboration with the director was a hit. Nothing wrong with that. But it's clear that He didn't push himself enough to take a more challenging role and instead settled for low hanging fruit. He tried to minimize the risk my taking on a simpler role. But christian bale on the other hand took on this edge of sword role that would easily fail if he didn't bring it. So in the end even though vice was much more controversial than first man..the very fact that christian bale pushed himself above and beyond any thought possible when playing a role of dick cheney earned him awards recognition.
That to me is precisely why bale is more admirable. Even if the movie was not well received during awards I could have guaranteed you that bale would be nominated no matter what. But Ryan gosling was holding his penis in his hands waiting for first man to be a hit and then using that success the studio would have campaigned for the movie during the awards. It is all about taking the control of performance away from directors and putting it in the hands of the actor.
That leaves us actors like Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper etc. These actors are huge stars but their box office draw and track record is very spotty. So directors like scorsese or tarantino don't wanna take risk casting them in a 100 million $ movie that may be a great movie but will be deprived of all its awards potential if the movie flops. So they have to work with less consistent directors.
Actors can control only their performance. But the ideal scenario for an actor to get recognition for his performance is if a director is making a great movie and he decided to cast the actor because he fits a certain role. So its talent + luck. The lesser the luck the more consistent these actors become. Among these actors only christian bale reduces the luck to almost zero. That's because the roles he takes are extremely challenging even on paper. Take first man vs vice. Ryan gosling chose to do the movie because he fit the role of neil armstrong perfectly and his last collaboration with the director was a hit. Nothing wrong with that. But it's clear that He didn't push himself enough to take a more challenging role and instead settled for low hanging fruit. He tried to minimize the risk my taking on a simpler role. But christian bale on the other hand took on this edge of sword role that would easily fail if he didn't bring it. So in the end even though vice was much more controversial than first man..the very fact that christian bale pushed himself above and beyond any thought possible when playing a role of dick cheney earned him awards recognition.
That to me is precisely why bale is more admirable. Even if the movie was not well received during awards I could have guaranteed you that bale would be nominated no matter what. But Ryan gosling was holding his penis in his hands waiting for first man to be a hit and then using that success the studio would have campaigned for the movie during the awards. It is all about taking the control of performance away from directors and putting it in the hands of the actor.