Batman Christian Bale playing former Vice President Dick Cheney? Yes, and his performance could land Bale an Academy Award nomination.

The biopic, directed by “The Big Short’s” Adam McKay, chronicles Cheney’s life as the former vice president under President George W. Bush.

Starting with his beginnings as a Washington bureaucrat, the film explores Cheney’s service under the Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush administrations and as the CEO of energy management company Halliburton.

Bale admits he never would have thought of himself for the Cheney role.

“It wasn’t until such a mad bastard as Adam came to me and said, ‘What about it?'” recalls Bale to the Hollywood Reporter. “And I thought, ‘Are you crazy?’ When I realized I was starting to get sucked into it and I was really starting to get obsessed with it, I think I texted something like, ‘You bastard, do you not realize how bloody difficult this is going to be?'”

To play Cheney, Bale had to shave his head, bleach his eyebrows, and put on 40 pounds.

“I would get four hours every single day in the chair in order to sort of mentally transition into Mr. Cheney,” said Bale. “What I really wanted to make sure I did is remove any of my own politics from it.”

Bale will not reveal what his personal opinion of Cheney is, telling THR, “I’m not going to give you anything like that, because I feel you want to just watch the character and believe in the character and not be thinking about what the actor really thinks at all.”

While he never got the chance to meet Cheney, Bale spent months researching the most controversial vice president of the modern era.

“I was completely always looking for the good, for the positive, for the understandable aspect of why he would’ve made the decisions that he made,” said Bale. “It was precisely to counter Adam and to counter what would be the assumed standpoint of the bunch of Hollywood liberals.”

Amy Adams co-stars as Lynne Cheney, accompanying a star-studded cast that includes Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, Rockwell as President Bush, and Jesse Plemons.

VICE opens on Christmas Day in 200 theaters around the country.