Will Christian Bale’s journey in new film Hostiles end in Oscar win?

CHRISTIAN BALE has been Oscar bait for a while now.

The British actor has racked up three nominations and one win, Best Supporting Actor for 2009’s The Fighter, in recent years.

And now, Bale’s back in the Academy Awards running again, with his new film Hostiles.

An epic and brutal Western, it comes across much like Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves which, if you remember, did pretty well come Oscar time by bagging no fewer than seven of the little golden statuettes.

Hostiles tells the story of legendary US Army Captain Joseph J Blocker (Bale) who, in New Mexico in 1892, reluctantly takes on one final mission before retirement.

He’s ordered to escort dying Cheyenne war chief Yellow Hawk, brilliantly played by Wes Studi, and his family back to sacred tribal lands.

It’s a perilous journey and on the way, they encounter Rosamund Pike’s young widow, and despite being bitter opponents for the past 20 years, the two men realise they need to co-operate if they are to survive.

And if Bale needs a talisman to help land that second Academy Award, it might just be his co-star Studi, who is of Cherokee descent, and who starred in previous Oscar-winning Westerns The Last Of The Mohicans and the aforementioned Dances With Wolves.

Batman star Bale is known for his single-minded approach to acting. He defied his doctors by shedding 60lbs for The Machinist, only to bulk up immediately afterwards to play the Caped Crusader.

But this time, his preparation was less demanding.

“As is usually the case, most of the time I’m just sitting in a room quietly staring at a wall,” admits the 43-year-old.

“It’s one of the few jobs where you can actually say: ‘I’m working right now’ when you’re doing that, just taking yourself to all the different places that the character would have gone to and what he’d been through.

“So you don’t feel like you’re trying very hard by the time you get to be working.

“I was also trying to familiarise myself with the history as growing up in England, I did not know a whole lot regarding Native Americans.

“I had a very rudimentary understanding of it, and it was a fascinating journey.

“I studied primarily with Chief Phillip Whiteman who was the Chief of the Northern Cheyenne.

“This was a man who had just wonderful, wonderful bearing about him. We would do blessings every morning, especially at sacred sites.

“You had these hard-nosed horse wranglers and cowboys in the crew who were in tears at his blessings.

“He’s an incredibly-soulful man and had a great impact upon me, but obviously with my character, Blocker, what you are dealing with is someone who has learned to hate.

“His hatred now has become real after so many battles because of the loss of so many of his brothers to Yellow Hawk.

“And what I loved about the story was this very gradual return to humanity by Blocker, and showing that in his limited way.”

Hostiles is in cinemas from Thursday.