Short-tempered actor Christian Bale is no stranger to aggressive stand-offs but the latest violent incident he was involved in stemmed from his desire to support a Chinese activist, not an angry rant.

The Fighter star is currently in China for the premiere of his upcoming movie, The Flowers Of War, and while there he decided to make a special trip to meet a human rights activist, Chen Guangcheng, but the visit went awry when he and his CNN film crew got pushed around by the local police.

It took Bale eight hours to drive from Bejing to the tiny village in Eastern China where the blind 40-year-old self-taught lawyer has been held under house arrest for the past 15 months.