Heath Ledger's role in The Dark Knight will be iconic

Stefanie Balogh

July 10, 2008 12:00am

EVEN before work had begun on a script for The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger pitched his terrifying punk-inspired take on Batman's arch-nemesis The Joker to director Christopher Nolan.
The pair had met several times and bounced around ideas for other projects, but nothing had come off.

‘‘He had told me early on one of the things he was concerned about was not being thrust into the spotlight as a movie star before he had shown what he could do as a serious actor,'' Nolan recalls.

‘‘I've heard that from a lot of young actors, but from all the people I've heard it from he's the only one I ever paid $10 to go see an incredible performance from.''

In casting the role of the psychotic Joker, Nolan looked to Ledger's turn as a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain.

‘‘It's a performance of consummate skill and I think everybody recognises the great acting in it,'' he says.

‘‘What is easy to miss is the boldness of what he does in that film because he plays an introverted character. He plays a lonely character, who gives nothing to anybody, and he plays it with no thought of vanity.

‘‘He gives nothing to the audience effectively and he risks doing that. He's really flying without a net.

‘‘In taking on the icon of The Joker as we had to in this film, I knew very much I needed somebody with that bold quality, with that fearlessness, who wasn't afraid to be compared to Jack Nicholson. Who was prepared to make the part his own.''

Nolan wanted The Joker to be ‘‘somebody who would be genuinely unsettling, frightening to audiences''.

‘‘Somebody who would stand for pure anarchy, and a force purely devoted to chaos. Somebody who wants to rip down the world around him for his own amusement.''

In Ledger, Nolan found his actor.

The Dark Knight is the sequel to the hugely successful Batman Begins, in which Nolan and his leading man, Christian Bale, put a grittier twist on the comic-book hero.

A sweeping morality tale of the fine line between hero and vigilante, The Dark Knight is destined to be remembered as Ledger's final completed film.

The Perth-born actor was filming Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus days before he died from an accidental drug overdose in his Manhattan apartment in January.

Ledger's Joker is intense. Co-star Bale applauds his ‘‘fantastic iconic performance'' and describes the late Aussie as a kindred spirit.

‘‘His total commitment, his immersion, is a wonderful thing to watch in any actor,'' Bale says. ‘‘He portrayed The Joker in a way that will be remembered through the ages. It's a phenomenal job.

‘‘It always makes it more interesting and an easier job for any other actor when you get that amount of commitment. I enjoyed recognising that he seemed to get the same pleasure and satisfaction out of acting that I do.

‘‘You know that it's a ridiculous job that we have, but the more seriously you take it, the more you enjoy it. He did superbly with it, then he removed the make-up and he was really wonderful company.''

Gary Oldman, who returns in The Dark Knight as Police Lieutenant Jim Gordon, is sad to be singing Ledger's praises while he is not around to talk about his own work. It's a tragedy, he says, that audiences will never know how much more Ledger would have been capable of.

‘‘He's probably looking down going, ‘You know I'm going to win an Oscar','' Oldman says.

It's a view shared by industry insiders, who believe Ledger is certain to be posthumously nominated for an Academy Award.

However, Oldman scoffs at suggestions Ledger's intensity in the role took a toll. Rumours that Ledger was emotionally affected by the darkness of The Joker are ‘‘just people looking for a darker story that doesn't exist'', he says.

‘‘If people talk about the intensity of Christian Bale and say he's a method actor and he's very serious and he gets into it, or Dan Day Lewis . . . well, he's still alive.''

With Ledger, Oldman adds, ‘‘you knew that you were in the presence of something incredible when you were working with him''.

‘‘I mean, that was obvious from the first morning I worked with him. You just went, ‘Wow'. It's almost like he found a sort of radio station and tuned into something we couldn't hear, a frequency.''

Oldman reckons Jack Nicholson was similarly tuned in on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as was Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon.

‘‘They find something and they get it. It's like they fly sub-sonic and then they go through the sound barrier. Dan (Day-Lewis) has done it. His work in There Will Be Blood is just f---ing extraordinary.

‘‘They are actors who find something and they work on a totally different level, and I think that's what Heath did.

‘‘However, between takes he would laugh and joke and sit on the kerb with me and smoke a cigarette and talk about his daughter, Matilda.

‘‘To be so contaminated by The Joker, you would have to be neurologically . . . have a disorder, wouldn't you?'' Oldman says bluntly.

Aaron Eckhart -- a newcomer to the Batman world as Gotham City's crusading District Attorney Harvey Dent -- says the genius of Ledger's performance was his ability to give The Joker some heart.

‘‘He was always telling us how he got his scars,'' Eckhart recalls.

‘‘The Joker really is the engine room of the film. He's asking all these questions of the characters and pushing everybody's buttons. And nobody wants to answer these questions: ‘Should I live, should I die?' Who wants to answer that question?''

Co-writer David Goyer sums up the feelings surrounding Ledger's performance.

‘‘He takes your breath away from the first moment he's on screen and it's hard to imagine . . . it's impossible to imagine anyone else now because he's so damn good.''