BALE SAYS GOODBYE TO BATMAN

  After starring in the three Chris Nolan-directed Batman films --the latest, The Dark Knight Rises, is out on July 20---Christian Bale has had enough of big budget blockbusters. 

  “I want to make some small movies now,” he tells me when we talk at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. “I’m looking at very different kinds of movies.”

  

   So different, in fact, that his four next movies combined will cost less than half the $250 million budget for The Dark Knight Rises. 

    Nevertheless, he admits he was sad when he finished his final scene, filmed on a rooftop with Catwoman (Anne Hathaway).  

      “It was a fairly low key-affair,” he recalls of his last day on the set. “I don’t like big goodbyes so I said goodbye to everybody fairly quickly and then sat in the outfit and the cowl for a good 20 minutes just reflecting what it had meant to me through the years.

      “I finally took them off knowing I wouldn’t be doing it again and it was very meaningful."