Christian Bale's movie disappearing act

Christian Bale has been “missing in action” on the set of his new movie.

He’s filming “The Fighter” in Massachusetts with Mark Wahlberg and Amy Adams and the method actor insists on “getting into character” by refusing to be seen on set.

“You only see him when it’s time for his scenes. Other than that, no one has any idea where he is. He just goes missing,” a source told E!.

Bale is determined to accurately portray former crack addict Dicky Eklund in the movie, which follows the life of boxer “Irish” Mickey Ward.

The source explained: “Christian has lost almost as much weight as he did for ‘The Machinist’. He is so gaunt. They have even thinned his hair, he just looks sickly.”

When filming “The Machinist,” Bale lived on just a can of tuna and an apple a day and lost 60 lbs. to play a paranoid insomniac.

Bale has said he didn’t plan to go to those extremes again, but admits he thrived on the “mental challenges” it presented.

“I wouldn’t want to take it to that extreme again. But it was necessary to lose weight for that role – not as much as I did – but it was a challenge mentally to see if I was capable of doing such a thing.

“I know that I can now, so there would need to be a certain gimmick if I was to do that all over again. But I do like the notion of seeing how far you can push yourself so I’m very happy that I did that. Everybody told me that I was risking my health the first time around, so doing it twice? I’m probably being an idiot.”