Christian Bale Breaks Ground on Heartwarming Project That's Been in the Works for Years

Bale finally began work on a foster care facility he's been advocating for 16 years.

By Michael Hein

Christian Bale looked emotional last week as he officially broke ground on a community center and housing project called Together California. The actor has been working on this concept for 16 years with the goal of "making sure foster siblings stay together." On Wednesday, Feb. 7, the work finally began.

Together California is an ambitious project that will include 12 homes and a community center all for siblings placed in foster care in Los Angeles County, according to a report by The Associated Press. Bale finally got that work started with the symbolic first shovel-full of dirt. He posed for the occasion with donors and local politicians on Wednesday. However, Bale has already been hard at work on this project for over a decade and a half, and has even visited this construction site many times in preparation.

"I would have done it all if it was just me by myself here," Bale told reporters afterward. The actor was born in the U.K. but has lived in California for three decades now, and he said that he learned early on about the dire situation for foster care in the area. The plight of children in these programs became even closer to Bale's life when he played Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy – including The Dark Knight Rises where his character is confronted with the harsh reality of a boys' home he funded.

Bale set his sights on one particular issue for kids in foster care: keeping siblings together. For children in new and frightening situations, separation from some of the last familiar faces they have left can be traumatizing. That said, Bale was surprised at how hard it was to get his program going.

"I didn't think it was going to take that long," he admitted. "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." He found that "it's way more complex. These are peoples' 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."

Bale found advocates who had managed to start programs similar to the one he was envisioning, and with their help he made California Together a reality. The facilities that began construction last week are now expected to be up and running in April of 2025. Bale said: "It's something that is incredibly satisfying for me, and I want to be involved every step of the way. Maybe this is the first one, and maybe this is the only one, and that would be great. But I'm quietly hoping that there'll be many of these."

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