Christian Bale
Actor Christian Bale attends The 22nd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium on January 30, 2016 in Los AngelesChristopher Polk/Getty Images for Turner

Christian Bale is known to be a method actor who commits completely to his role. The actor has been known to go to any lengths to transform his mind and body to embody his character.

And so, it would come as no surprise that Christian Bale's performance as the serial killer Patrick Bateman would be controversial among his own co-stars when they were filming the 2000 movie adaptation.

In a new oral history from Moviemaker, Bale explains how his co-stars originally didn't understand his acting style as Bateman. As Bale said: "Josh Lucas and I did a film together recently and he opened my eyes to something that I had been unaware of. He informed me that all of the other actors thought that I was the worst actor they'd ever seen."

That is quite the judgement, seeing as the Oscar winner has turned in quite a few award worthy performances in his career so far. But perhaps, American Psycho was a different time.

Bale went on to say that Lucas told him that they kept looking at me and talking about me, saying, 'Why did Mary fight for this guy? He's terrible.' And it wasn't until he saw the film that he changed his mind. And Bale admitted that he was in the dark completely about that critique. 

Christopher Nolan dark knight
Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan at Spike TV's 6th annual "Guys Choice" awards in 2012.Reuters

His co-star Chloë Sevigny described his method performance: "Working with Christian was pretty hard because I didn't know this whole Method thing. I was pretty fresh."

She added that she hadn't done that many films before, and that an actor would lose himself to such a degree and was so consumed by the part, that she was having a hard time trying to socialize with him.

Christian Bale goes on to explain in the oral history, his intention was to make Patrick Bateman into a completely heartless monster. Well it certainly looks like he succeeded.