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Christian Bale's caught on camera China incident (VIDEO)

By April MacIntyre Dec 16, 2011, 16:05 GMT

02/27/2011 - Christian Bale - 83rd Annual Academy Awards - Press Room - Kodak Theatre - Hollywood, CA, USA © Andrew Evans / PR Photos

Actor Christian Bale was turned away by checkpoint guards, all caught by CNN cameras.

"I am here to see Chen Guangcheng," the "Dark Knight" actor said, who  was translated by a CNN reporter.

"Go away!" the plainclothes guards replied.

"Why can I not visit this free man?" Bale asked.  He was then set upon by the guards and had to flee the scene.

Bale and his CNN entourage were chased out of China for over 40 minutes.

Bale tells CNN: "What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is..."

The person he speaks of is 40-year-old Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught lawyer confined to his home along with his wife, mother and daughter, since he was released from prison in September 2010. A local court had sentenced him to more than four years in prison for damaging property and disrupting traffic in a protest.

CNN reports that his supporters maintain authorities used trumped-up charges to silence Chen, who rose to fame in the late 1990s thanks to his legal advocacy for what he called victims of abusive practices by China's family-planning officials.

Bale became aware of his situation while filming "The Flowers of War," a wartime drama set in 1930s Nanjing in which he plays a mortician trying to save a group of schoolgirls from the clutches invading Japanese soldiers.

Bale reached out to CNN on his journey to visit Chen.

CNN noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gary Locke, the American ambassador to China, have both championed Chen's cause.

"I'm not brave doing this," Bale tells CNN. "The local people who are standing up to the authorities, who are visiting Chen and his family and getting beaten or detained, I want to support them."

"Really, what else can I do to help Chen?" he kept asking as the clock struck midnight, with his latest movie -- partially funded by the state -- about to open nationwide in China.