With his fingers still burned from his ill fated mainstream venture, Bale would go back to finding niche scripts that allowed him to play out his true eccentricities. This time he forced himself to lose an astonishing 63 pounds in order to play a skeletal insomniac factory worker in this relentlessly disturbing affair.

The film itself divided critics but his performance was again singled out, if only for his extreme crash dieting technique which saw the gaunt actor survive on just a tin of tuna and an apple every day. He even took up smoking to dull his appetite further.