Christian Bale Didn't Even Have to Audition to Play Steve Jobs

After tackling Batman and now Moses (in this winter’s Exodus), Oscar-winner Christian Bale will take on yet another mythic figure — he’s officially been cast to play Steve Jobs in an upcoming big screen biopic.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who is adapting Walter Isaacson’s authoritative 2011 biography of the Apple co-founder for the big screen, made the announcement about Bale’s casting in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday morning. (Leonardo DiCaprio had previously been in talks for the role but dropped out earlier this month. Bale, of course, looks a lot more like the real-life Jobs than DiCaprio does.)

“We needed the best actor on the board in a certain age range, and that’s Christian Bale,” Sorkin said, adding that the famed method actor didn’t even have to audition for the part. “The role is an extremely difficult role. He has more words to say in this movie than most people have in three movies combined. There isn’t a scene or frame that he’s not in, and there’s a tremendous amount of language. It’s an extremely difficult part and he’s going to crush it.”

Steve Jobs in 1984

Sorkin — who also wrote the 2010 Facebook movie The Social Network — told The Daily Beast in 2012 that the movie would take place over three important moments from Jobs’ life. “Each of these three scenes is going to take place before a product launch — backstage before a product launch,” he said. “The first one being the Mac, the second one being NeXT [after he had left Apple], and the third one being the iPod.”

Bale won’t be the first actor to play Jobs. Ashton Kutcher, whose resemblance to the Apple visionary was much remarked-upon, made an obvious choice for the rushed and mildly received 2013 film Jobs.

Photo credit: @Getty Images

This post has been updated.