FILM fans were last night given a sneak preview of Christian Bale's worst American accent so far.
A recording from the set of Terminator Stagnation revealed snippets from the actor's latest tour de force of badly mangled syllables.
Bale first inflicted his dreadful accent with the darkly comic American Psycho, while in 3.10 to Yuma he played an Arizona rancher who seemed to have spent a huge amount of time in south London.
But it was his Batman performances, where he switched between two equally appalling accents, that made critics sit up, take notice and ask why the part wasn't given to an American.
Bale is in the vanguard of a new wave of British actors who have taken Hollywood by storm with their astonishingly bad attempts to sound like Americans.
Film critic Tom Booker said: "He's certainly getting worse, there's no question of that. He now sounds like a child playing cowboys and Indians. Marvellous.
"He's definitely as bad as Hugh Laurie, though perhaps still not quite as awful as Eddie Izzard, but he is getting there. And who knows, one day he may even be as bad as Bob Hoskins."
But Booker dismissed the idea of British roles for British Actors, adding: "These accents must be allowed to flourish. They are little works of art. A bit like a someone playing the trumpet really badly."
Meanwhile the recording also revealed that Bale remains a miserable, aggressive prick who is unable to handle the stress of being paid millions of pounds for dressing up and playing pretend.
