Interview: Heath Ledger
The Joker
Heath Ledger on The Joker
By Bob Strauss
When Heath Ledger called from New York last November, he was
enthusiastic about his just-completed role as The Joker in Christopher
Nolan’s latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight.
But he was also a little defensive about the whole thing.
Several years earlier, the Australian actor had quite publicly walked
away from mainstream Hollywood to concentrate on artistically
fulfilling independent films.
This paid off spectacularly for Ledger, earning him an Oscar nomination for the beloved Brokeback Mountain and making him a bigger star than ever.
So
he felt a tad guilty about taking the big budget, comic book movie job.
But portraying the classic maniac was also the most enjoyable thing
he’d ever done.
“I spent a lot of time with Chris
beforehand, going over different looks,” Ledger said of the deformed
villain with the harlequin face. The first shots of The Joker’s
smeared, cadaverous makeup had just hit the web and the response had
been mixed, so the actor felt he had some explaining to do.
“It’s
very hard to sum up or capture what I was doing in one photo,” Ledger
admitted. “There’s not really one angle or one look or one expression
or a freezed frame that looks to me like what you’re going to see in
the film.
I barely sit still for a moment like that to exist!
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Heath Ledger's Joker with Christian Bale's Batman in The Dark Knight
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“So
I think it’s healthy and I think it’s correct for people to have mixed
feelings, because I do when I see those still images. It doesn’t look
like what we’re going to see. And I think that’s a good thing, in a
way, that something can’t be summarized in one image.”
Ledger
went on to explain why approximating Jack Nicholson’s iconic Joker from
Tim Burton’s earlier Batman film simply wouldn’t have worked for him.
“I
just had an innate understanding of exactly how to play it for Chris,”
he said. “If Tim Burton came to me and he was directing The Dark Knight
and for some odd reason asked for me to play The Joker, I’d say no, I
couldn’t step into your world and do what Jack Nicholson did. But
instead Chris Nolan approached me, obviously, and I’d seen the world
he’d set up and in which I’d be playing him, and I thought I could do
something new and interesting in it.”
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Asked for more details
about his approach to the character, Ledger joked: “I’m certain that DC
Comics and Warner Bros. have snipers trained on me, and if I say too
much I’ll walk out of this hotel and they’ll peg me for sure! But I’m
really proud of the time we spent on the movie.”
Considering
the 28-year-old Ledger’s unexpected death two months after this
conversation, that statement seems a bit eerie. Then again, it was
comforting to know that, even that close to the end, Ledger was joking
and still the fun guy who knew he’d come a long way from Perth,
Australia, but hadn’t let it go to his head.
When asked if his success ever made him want to pinch
himself, he said, “I do, I guess. But, not really. Day by day, I kind
of breathe, and I just feel like it’s natural, it’s my story. It’s
still evolving and still surprises me. But I am grateful for it. And
whether I’m from Perth or from New York City is irrelevant. You either
get out there and make it happen or you don’t.
“You’re lucky or you’re not.”
Bob Strauss is an L.A.-based entertainment writer