Christian Bale claims Leonardo DiCaprio gets ‘first dibs’ on every major Hollywood movie

Christian Bale has revealed that he achieved most of his roles including American Psycho because fellow actor Leonardo DiCaprio had “already passed” on the film.

The 48-year-old Welsh actor claimed that Leo, 47, gets “first dibs” on all the Hollywood movies that require a male actor in their age bracket.

Most significantly, Christian suggested that his career started after Leonardo (who was originally cast to play Zach Baron in the 2000 film American Psycho) dropped out of the movie allowing Bale to take the part.

However the Batman star, who spoke in an interview with GQ for their November cover, thanked the Titanic counterpart as he believed many owed their careers to Leonardo for declining roles.

He said: “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…All those people I have worked with multiple times, they all offered every one of those roles to him first.”

Christian added: “Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing? I mean, I can’t do what he does. I don’t want the exposure he has either…he does it magnificently.”

The American Psycho star continued to praise Leonardo by saying that he gets to choose which work he does because of how “phenomenal” he is.

The two Hollywood greats have been on the same scene for quite some time after both starting their careers as child actors.

Christian even admitted to losing five movie roles to Leonardo in the 90s including What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Titanic.

Despite the seemingly unlimited choice for the Gatsby actor, Leonardo has previously spoken about how he used to not be able to book any job before he turned his attitude around to the whole industry.

“You’re supposed to set yourself up as somebody who basically can do what they want, and I remember having that attitude for a while and I didn’t book a job for a year,” he told the Screen Actors Guild Foundation in 2014.

“It was that year of rejection where I kind of took a different attitude to the audition process, and I started to get jobs after that…I said to myself that I am not dependent on this job. This isn’t gonna define me.”

The Oscar winner continued to talk about how he focused on preparing for each role and not allowing his self-worth to depend on whether he booked a job or not.

Since the start of their careers, Leonardo has booked 48 movies as an actor in comparison to Christian Bale’s 55.