He's no newcomer to big-budget movies — breakout roles do not get much bigger than playing the lead in a Spielberg flick at age 13. And Bale's credits include the apocalyptic dragon tale "Reign of Fire" and a role as a contemptuous killer in the update of "Shaft."

Yet Bale's general choices and his dislike of the spotlight have left him, at 31, only now the central player in a behemoth Hollywood production.

"I never had a desire to be well known," Bale said. "There was never enormous ambition, so I think I managed to stay under the radar for most people in the public eye. And consequently, I find myself for many people being, 'Oh, he's this new guy in "Batman.' " I mean, I've been around for 20 years doing this."

For much of that time, Bale focused on smaller, offbeat movies.

In "American Psycho," Bale was a remorseless yuppie serial killer. In "The Machinist," he was a gaunt scarecrow suffering through a yearlong bout of insomnia.

Even his higher-profile films — the musical "Newsies," the World War II dance tale "Swing Kids," the period dramas "Little Women" and "The Portrait of a Lady" — indicate that Bale's tastes run somewhere south of mainstream.

Born in Wales, Bale spent his early childhood globe-hopping with his family, living in California and Portugal for a time. He began his career in commercials, TV and stage roles in England before Spielberg cast him as a pampered British boy struggling to survive the Japanese occupation in China in "Empire of the Sun."

Though he worked regularly, following up with roles in Kenneth Branagh's "Henry V" and the lead in a TV version of "Treasure Island," Bale was not the typical child star.

"I hated the publicity I got from 'Empire of the Sun.' So I ran from it and I said, 'I like the acting, but I really don't want anything to do with the rest of

it,' " Bale said. "To most people's eyes, I disappeared, but I pretty much worked once a year, even if it was on just a small role, because I did enjoy that."

He made a seamless transition to adult roles. "I was fortunate enough that I started off playing character roles. 'Empire of the Sun' is not your typical high school comedy. So I started off with nice adult roles," Bale said.

"Batman Begins" presents the early days of the DC Comics hero, offering a darker vision than the film series that began with Tim Burton's 1989 "Batman." Burton's two "Batman" movies and two other sequels restored much of the comic books' brooding tone to a character best known to many people as a comic figure from the 1960s TV show.

The new Batman film has billionaire Bruce Wayne torn between justice and vigilante vengeance years after witnessing his parents' murders. Bruce travels the globe to delve into the criminal mind and eventually finds a mentor (Liam Neeson) who hones the young man for the task of fighting corruption.

Bruce returns to his native Gotham City, a cesspool of crime, where he becomes the phantomlike Batman, aided by his surrogate father, butler Alfred (Michael Caine), a childhood friend (Katie Holmes) now in the district attorney's office, a gadgetry whiz (Morgan Freeman), and a virtuous cop (Gary Oldman).

Aiming for gritty realism, the filmmakers needed an actor who could capture the fanaticism that would drive a man to cloak himself in a batsuit.