Heath Ledger is talking and the world is listening. Interviewing with both MTV and IESB in recent days, Ledger shed some light on his take on the Dark Knight’s greatest nemesis.
When asked by MTV about the experience, Ledger said, “It’s the most fun I’ve had with a character and probably will ever have.” Ledger went on to say, “It was an exhausting process. At the end of the day I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I was absolutely wrecked.”
Ledger said that his Joker is intended to scare the audience and cited Stanley Kubrick’s
A Clockwork Orange (1971) as an early influence on his performance. Ledger told MTV, “
(The Joker) has zero empathy.”
In preparation for the role made famous by Academy Award-winner Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s 1989
Batman, Ledger told IESB:
“
…for the Joker I locked myself away in a hotel room for six weeks. I just formulated a voice and a posture and found a real psychology behind the Joker. I really put a lot of work into it. And the experience also on a production scale, by the way, is obviously a completely different shoot. Batman is just such a machine. It's huge and I've never worked on anything that big.”
Does Ledger worry about comparisons to Nicholson? He told IESB:
“
I was a big fan of Jack Nicholson - still am - his portrayal of the Joker was perfect for Tim Burton's world and if Tim Burton had come to me and he was doing the sequel and he asked me to play the Joker in his movie, I wouldn't do it. I couldn't. Because you couldn't touch what Jack Nicholson did.”
Batman: The Dark Knight is still in production, slated for a July 2008 release.