Hollywood actor and Batman star Christian Bale was roughed up by security guards in Shandong this week when he tried to visit detained legal activist Chen Guangcheng - a move that has cast fresh international attention on the blind campaigner.
Bale, who is in China to promote his Nanking massacre film The Flowers of War, was stopped on Thursday along with an accompanying CNN camera crew outside Dongshigu village, where Chen has been held under house arrest for 15 months, a CNN report said.
Bale and the camera crew were confronted by four men and pushed after approaching a checkpoint leading to Chen's village and saying they wanted to see the activist. More men soon emerged and punched Bale when he repeatedly asked: 'Why can I not visit this man?'
After the actor and journalists retreated, they were chased by a minivan for more than half an hour. CNN filmed the encounter and posted the footage on its website.
'What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is,' Bale told CNN as their van left the scene. 'I'm not being brave doing this. [It is] the local people who are standing up to the authorities and insisting on going to visit Chen and his family and getting beaten up for it.'
CNN said Bale got interested in the plight of Chen from its news coverage and approached it while in China to say he hoped to meet him.