Christian Bale packs a punch in The Fighter

While Colin Firth is the man tipped for Oscar glory later this month, fellow Brit Christian Bale is also weighing in as a contender for an Academy Award. Bale - the pricklier, feistier of the two method actors - is in the running to take the best supporting actor Oscar for The Fighter.

Bale's turn as a crack-addicted boxing trainer is considered the 37-year-old's strongest performance in years. He has already won a Golden Globe and last Sunday received the best supporting actor prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Many reviewers feel that he outshines his co-star Mark Wahlberg, who has been left empty-handed in the current awards season.

Exuberant and uplifting, The Fighter tells the story of two real-life brothers and former boxers - 'Irish' Micky Ward (Wahlberg) and his older half-brother Dicky Eklund (Bale), a talented and charismatic boxer whose promising career was derailed by addiction and jail. Ward was a struggling welterweight who went on to become a world champion under his brother's tutelage.

Much of the action takes place outside the boxing ring, with The Fighter focusing on Ward's struggle with his dysfunctional family. Melissa Leo and Amy Adams - both in the running for the best supporting actress Oscar - play his mother and girlfriend respectively.

Bale prepared for his role by hanging out with Dicky Eklund in the blue-collar district of his hometown, Lowell, Massachusetts, visiting crack houses and the jail he spent time in. He trained to fight like Eklund - who once landed a punch on Sugar Ray Leonard - and again transformed his physical appearance, as he did in The Machinist, by losing more than two stone in weight.

Bale became world famous at 13 for his role in Steven Spielberg's 1987 epic Empire of the Sun. But the Welsh-born child star's US career never truly kicked off until 2000, with his sinister turn as a psychopathic yuppie in American Psycho.

And despite becoming Batman, Bale has spent a good proportion of the past decade as the nearly man in films such as 3:10 to Yuma (playing second fiddle to Russell Crowe) and Public Enemies (in which Johnny Depp stole his thunder).

Bale already had a reputation as an 'intense' actor but he gained notoriety when he was arrested, following The Dark Knight's London premiere in July 2008, for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister.
 
A few months later he launched a sweary tirade at a crew member on the set of Terminator Salvation. The cinematographer had apparently walked into his line of sight while filming. Humiliatingly for Bale, tapes of his meltdown were released on the internet.
 
We will discover on February 27 whether the Academy can forgive Bale for his bad behaviour both on and off set. Geoffrey Rush from The King's Speech could still snatch the best supporting actor Oscar from Bale. And both men face strong competition from fellow nominees Michael Douglas (Wall Street 2), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Jeremy Renner (The Town).

WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:

Adam Smith, Empire: "The Fighter might tread the well-worn route of almost every sports movie before it, but two very different but equally powerful performances combine to deliver an exhilarating fight-flick that, like its scrappy central character, is impossible not to root for." (5/5 stars)

AO Scott, the New York Times: "Mr Bale's performance is astonishing, in part because he so completely conquers a daunting set of physical and psychological challenges."

Peter Debruge, Variety: "One could argue whether Micky or Dicky is the film's main character, but there's no denying that Dicky undergoes the more compelling arc.  [He] must overcome addiction, narcissism and defeat before he can let his little brother emerge the family champion." ·