The incredible lengths Heath Ledger went to in order to embody the Joker
In hindsight, Jack Nicholson got it remarkably easy compared to any other actor to have ever played the Joker in a major feature film, which is ironic considering he also got paid the most by far.
The top-billed star of Tim Burton’s Batman secured himself a lucrative contract that changed the financial side of acting forever, and all he had to do was spend a couple of hours in the makeup chair and don the signature purple costume. That’s not to say it’s easy for anyone to sit there and have people plaster things all over their faces, as Jim Carrey can attest, but it pales in comparison to his successors.
Jared Leto went far too method for David Ayer’s Suicide Squad to the point Will Smith maintains he never actually met the man behind the face paint until the red carpet premiere, while he sent his co-stars a string of unsettling gifts in service of a performance that was whittled down in post-production in a terrible film ultimately disowned by its director.
Joaquin Phoenix lost over 50 pounds and immersed himself so deeply into character that he confessed he found himself on the brink of madness, while Barry Keoghan spent five hours being transformed into the most grotesque version of ‘The Clown Prince of Crime’ seen on-screen yet in The Batman, even though his entire face was never shown in its entirety. Playing the Joker is an arduous undertaking, then, but it’s hard to look beyond Heath Ledger as the greatest-ever interpretation of the character.
It’s ridiculous to think that comic book readers and Bat-fans everywhere were up in arms over a handsome, charming, and charismatic performer still in their mid-20s being hired as Batman’s arch-nemesis when Christopher Nolan began putting The Dark Knight together, but any negative words were swiftly eaten once Ledger was revealed in action.
Drawing his influences from as far and wide as he could, Ledger named A Clockwork Orange‘s Alex, Sid Vicious, and Johnny Rotten as inspirations in creating a persona he described as “a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy” and that statement is entirely reflective of what he brought to the table in his Oscar-winning tour-de-force.
Ledger isolated himself for weeks to figure out the personality, voice, and mannerisms he sought to utilise, becoming steeped in comic book lore and crafting a ‘Joker diary’ full of images, ideas, and elements to inform his performance. Altering his naturally deep voice to a higher pitch ended up giving him a dry mouth when cameras weren’t rolling, which he worked into the character by constantly having the ‘Jester of Genocide’ licking his lips and flicking at the scars on his face with his tongue.
He’d regularly sleep for as little as two hours a night during production, actively encouraged Christian Bale to throw him around for real during their brutal interrogation room exchange, and dropped improvisational tics into filming on a regular basis, all in service of a genre-defining turn that tragically endures forever as the last major role of his career.