Christian Bale is a notorious method actor. He lost 63 pounds for his role in The Machinest, and had to gain a whopping 100 pounds back, to play the Dark Knight in Batman Begins. I hear he almost died from doing that! He also had to slim down to play a POW in Rescue Dawn, and it looks as if he’s at it again for his new film The Fighter.

In these pics from JustJared, we get a look at Bale looking quite the part of a crack head, for his role as Dicky Eklund, a “welterweight boxer turned trainer turned drug addict”  The Fighter centers on the story of boxer “Irish” Mickey Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg, who again teams up with director David O. Russell, who Wahlberg previously worked with on Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees. The film chronicles Ward’s early days on the rough streets of Lowell, Massachusetts, and how he was helped to the world lightweight championship by his half-brother, played by Bale. The film also stars Amy Adams as Charlene, a gritty bartender from Mass. who ends up dating Ward.

The Fighter is set for a 2010 release.