Role Call: Christian Bale

RESCUE DAWN (2007)

THE ROLE Dieter Dengler, a U.S. Navy pilot who, in 1966, was shot down and held captive in a Laos jungle prison; after rallying his fellow prisoners, the real-life hero led their narrow escape and rescue.

WHAT EW SAID Lisa Schwarzbaum: ''Bale's surprise in Rescue Dawn is the lightness of being — the modest, good-natured grace — that he locates in Dengler even under the most agonizing conditions. I've never seen the actor look more at home with his own taut charisma, or put his sinewy physicality to more rewarding use.''

Image credit: Empire of the Sun: Everett Collection

Empire of the Sun (1987)

THE ROLE In his breakout performance, Bale carried an epic Steven Spielberg movie on his 13-year-old shoulders, playing Jim Graham, a British boy in WWII-era Shanghai who is separated from his aristocrat parents, captured by the Japanese, and held in a POW camp.

WHAT EW SAID Not much — we didn't exist yet! But Janet Maslin of the New York Times had this to say about the budding actor: ''Mr. Bale... at first seems just a handsome and malleable young performer, another charming child star. But the epic street scene that details the Japanese invasion of the city and separates Jim from his parents reveals this boy to be something more. As Mr. Bale, standing atop a car amid thousands of extras and clasping his hands to his head, registers the fact that Jim is suddenly alone, he conveys the schoolboy's real terror and takes the film to a different dramatic plane.''