Batman does more than fight crime in Gotham City. Considering the level of crime in the city, the fictional Gotham is modeled on New York City; Batman would have his hands full, Robin or no Robin. The actor most famous for playing Batman, Christian Bale, hung up his cowl after a highly successful run as the Caped Crusader.
Since retiring from the Batman series, the 50-year-old Oscar winner has starred in a number of very successful films, including “Ford v Ferrari.” and “American Hustle,” and most recently, the British-born actor has been in the news for what he is doing off-screen.
Bale has lived in Southern California most of his life and considers it home. He also has long had a dream of giving back to the community in a very specific way, and he is finally seeing his dream come to fruition. The “Vice” actor is heavily involved in a new project creating housing and a community center as part of a plan to protect foster siblings from being separated from one another and placed in different homes.
Bale envisioned the plan some 16 years ago and met with Palmdale, California, officials last week to discuss and celebrate the planned housing. He got the idea to create homes when he discovered how large the number of siblings being separated in foster care in Los Angeles County was.
The “American Psycho” actor said: “I was stunned and mad to learn that we have more foster kids here than anywhere else in the country. I was also kicking myself for not knowing that before. So I thought, ‘Well, this is it. Let’s focus on this.’ My wife and I decided that we were going to do everything we could in our power to change that.”
As Bale and his wife discovered, it wasn’t as easy as buying land and building houses. He continued: “I had a very naive idea about kind of getting a piece of land and then, bringing kids in and the brothers and sisters living together and sort of singing songs like the Von Trapp family in ‘The Sound of Music’. It’s way more complex. These are people’s lives. And we need to be able to have them land on their feet when they age out. There’s so much involved in this.”
After traveling to Chicago and meeting with developers of a similar program, Bale went back to Southern California with a plan. It is one he saw through COVID-19 and will be complete in 2025 with 12 homes and a community center. He also said: “With our Together California model, [the village] is something absolutely new, totally transformative, and something completely needed. Imagine the absolute pain and trauma of losing your parents or being torn from your parents, and then losing your brothers and sisters on top of that. That’s no way to treat kids.”
It is nice to see a Hollywood celebrity using their fame and platform to help others. Kids in foster care are often forgotten about and considered disposable. Christian Bale is doing what he can to make sure more kids in Los Angeles stay with their siblings and have a shot at a normal life.
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