Christian Bale Confuses On-Set Actress For Real-Life Stripper

While shooting his upcoming film Knight of Cups, director Terrence Malik apparently thought that keeping Christian Bale in the dark as to who was an actor and who was an extra would make for a better performance. So, for a scene in a strip club, Bale went in blind — and ended up chatting with a woman whose saucy moves majorly impressed him. Turns out, it was actress Teresa Palmer. But The Big Short star thought Palmer was an actual, real-life, honest-to goodness master of the pole and stage, Bale recently told the Evening Standard. “We were filming in a strip club, and Teresa Palmer’s there in her little silver hotpants and I’m asking her how long she’d been dancing for? Does she enjoy it? What got her into it?” Bale recalled. “I had no idea that she was an actress until about a week after working with her. Suddenly I saw a billboard with her face on it and I went ‘What?’” We're wondering how Teresa Palmer feels about Bale's assumption — not that there's anything wrong with being a stripper in the slightest. But there's definitely a weird subtext buried somewhere in Bale's, "By golly, I thought she was a REAL stripper!" routine. A thought for the actor: This might have been of those mistakes you don't tell anyone about.