Christian Bale interview "I think Matt Damon will make a really good director" | MarkMeets | Celebrity News, Music, Movies, TV, London Film Premieres

Christian Bale believes that his Le Mans ‘66 co-star Matt Damon could be a great director one day, describing Jason Bourne a “multi-talented” filmmaker.

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“Matt [Damon] is a great actor. And he’s also got such a great understanding of the cameras, the lenses. He has a totally different approach to me. Probably a more comprehensive and intelligent approach. I think he’ll make a really good director at some point,” Bale says.

“Our approach to acting is sort of similar to the differences between our characters as well. Shelby is one hell of a racer, but is more strategic and understanding of the bigger picture, versus Miles, who’s just sort of doing his thing and often burning bridges and creating scorched earth because that’s the only way he knows how to do it.

“This acting thing is the only thing I know how to do, though many would argue that point, whereas Matt is multi-talented.

Damon, best known as an actor in films like The Martian, Ocean’s Eleven and The Departed, is a screenwriter too, winning an Academy Award for the Good Will Hunting script he co-wrote with Ben Affleck. He’s a producer too, with credits on Manchester By The Sea, Jason Bourne and Promised Land. Bale, in contrast, has only ever acted on film and won an Oscar for The Fighter.

Win Le Mans ’66 on Blu-ray

Read on to learn more about Christian Bale’s research methods for Le Mans ‘66, the dangerous stunts he drove himself, and his thoughts on why racing drivers make such fascinating subject matter.

Ken Miles is a fascinating character. What did you know about him going into Le Mans ‘66?

Christian Bale: I knew nothing about him, and I think I’m probably in the same boat as most people on that. He’s very much an unsung hero of motor-racing. He was a very English man, from the Midlands in Britain. Before racing, he was a military man, served in a tank unit. He was there, I think, D-Day plus two or three days after, then went across Europe. He was there when they liberated Belsen. Then he became an absolute, pure, racer’s racer, very strong-minded, incredibly passionate about what he did. Within the motor-racing circuit, you hear many stories about him, about that race in ’66, but they were all new to me.

Are you proud to finally bring his story out into the wider world?

Yes, but I also don’t think that this was a man who was doing it for the fame. I think that’s what made him so admired by the racers – that he did it just for that purity. He was inducted into the [racing] Hall of Fame already, and I think he would have been very happy being a man that the people in the racing world know who he is. So, I suspect that he felt that he got recognition. In my mind, I never would have viewed him as somebody who was longing for anything more.