Christian Bale Is Set To Open a Village in L.A. To House Foster Siblings Together

Academy Award-winning actor Christian Bale is getting closer to fulfilling his 17-year dream of building a village outside of Los Angeles where foster siblings could live together without facing the threat of separation. 

“The Dark Knight” star and Dr. Eric Esrailian, a physician and UCLA professor, have co-founded Together California to create a new kind of community for children in foster care.

In 2022, the charity secured a combined $1.7 million in funding from the city of Palmdale, CA, in suburban L.A., and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to purchase a 4.7-acre parcel of land for the project.

Two years later, construction began on Bale and Esrailian’s “village” in the high desert north of Los Angeles. Designed by the acclaimed firm AC Martin Architects, the development will include 12 three-bedroom townhomes, each housing six children. 

Professionally trained full-time foster parents will be put in charge of providing care and support for the children.

The Together California village will also feature a 7,000-square-foot community center offering enrichment programs and services for the foster children and their caretakers, a garden, and open spaces.

Additionally, studio apartments will be available to provide temporary housing for the kids’ birth parents and transitional housing for teens aging out of foster care.

Project 17 years in the making

The idea to take action to improve the lives of California’s foster children initially came to Bale when his daughter, Emmeline Bale, was just 3 years old in the early 2000s.

The British actor, 51, revealed in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” in May that he imagined what would happen to his toddler if he and his wife, Sibi Bale, were gone.

That, in turn, prompted Bale to look at foster care, leading him to a startling statistic: Roughly 75% of siblings entering foster care in the U.S. end up being separated and having to live apart. 

“Imagine the trauma of that, you know? Being taken from your parents, and then you lose your siblings,” he told CBS correspondent Tracy Smith. “That’s just something that we shouldn’t be doing.”

Although Bale grew up in the family of a circus performer and an activist in Wales, England, and never personally experienced the challenges of foster care, he stressed that this has not diminished his empathy for those who have.

“I don’t think you have to have any connection to foster care in your past,” the father of two told the news outlet. “It’s just about a basic understanding that, as a society, how can you not take care of our children? So I don’t think it requires a connection. It just requires having a heart.”

Making plans and finding donors

Armed with this conviction, the “American Hustle” star soon joined forces with Tim McCormick, who at the time was working on building foster care housing aimed at keeping siblings together in Chicago.

Bale enlisted McCormick to lead Together California, applying his previous experience to the Golden State, which has the highest number of children in foster care in the U.S.—topping 43,000, according to 2023 figures.

Over the next three years, Together California raised enough funding from public and private resources, including the Austrian-American Council West, which contributed $6 million toward building the village’s community center, and multiple individual donors, among them Leonardo DiCaprio.

Slowly but surely, the unremarkable patch of scrubland next to Palmdale’s McAdam Park has transformed into a bustling construction site swarming with workers and heavy machinery. By Aug. 1, the first homes in the village have begun to take shape.  

“The walls are not all up yet, but the vision is clear: an innovative model of foster care filled with hope, connection, and the kind of love that helps children believe that dreams can come true,” Together California wrote in a caption accompanying a timelapse video showing the construction progress posted to the organization’s Instagram page.

Better late than never

Bale has admitted in interviews that he never thought that it would take the better part of two decades to realize his dream project.

“I didn’t think it was going to take that long,” Bale told the Associated Press in 2024. “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.'”

Speaking to “CBS Sunday Morning” this spring, the “Ford v. Ferrari” star emphasized that even if he had known that it would take 17 years to build the foster care community, he would have done it anyway.

Although Bale is considered one of the finest actors of his generation and has appeared in dozens of films, including the 2010 drama “The Fighter,” which won him an Oscar, the A-lister said he considers the Together California project one of his most important achievements.

“When I’m closing my eyes for the last time … I want to think about, ‘Did I do some good? Did I make any changes in the world that were useful?'” Bale told CBS’ Smith. “And this will be one of the things that I’m most proud of when I draw my last breath.”

The first children are slated to move into the Together California homes in Palmdale in late December or early January 2026.