What Christian Bale Thought of Joaquin Phoenix Playing The Joker After Heath Ledger
Christian Bale already starred opposite one Joker in the iconic feature The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger’s performance as the clown prince of crime is typically revered as one of the greatest in the genre. So when Bale heard Joaquin Phoenix would be playing the character, he recognized the Gladiator star had some pretty big shoes to fill.
Christian Bale called Joaquin Phoenix brave for taking on The Joker
The whole world pretty much knows how good Heath Ledger was as The Joker. Apart from receiving nearly unanimous praise for his work, Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Bale is also no slouch in the acting department, having won an Oscar himself and having enjoyed similar praise for his body of work. But even Bale was amazed when he saw what Ledger brought to the table up close.
“Heath Ledger, oh my God, what a performance. What a pleasure to have gotten to work with him, and just to see him and how much he put himself into the Joker,” Bale told GQ not too long ago. “And I was watching him going, ‘Yeah, this is absolutely fantastic. Are we in trouble?’ When Chris [Nolan] and I first sat down, we said, the problem with Batman is interesting, right? And so Batman, actually, he’s very close to being a villain himself. So, let’s never let him become dull by comparison, and unfortunately, I was sitting there going, ‘I feel a little bit dull by comparison because Heath is just killing this.’”
Still, Bale went on to say that he couldn’t have been prouder of Ledger’s performance. Eleven years later, Phoenix would inherit the sinister role, which Bale thought took a lot of courage given Ledger’s iconic portrayal.
“Joaquin is one of the best actors around, you know, and obviously I worked with Heath. You know, it’s a brave thing to follow up that performance and he always makes interesting choices. Dying to see it, I wish them the best with that,” Bale once told ET Canada(via Heroic Hollywood).
Joaquin Phoenix wasn’t intimidated at all by Heath Ledger’s Joker
Phoenix’s Joker ended up being completely different than Ledger’s. The former’s film, simply titled Joker, explored the origins of the villain, which already took a few liberties with the character’s backstory. However, some were still curious if Phoenix felt threatened in some way for having to live up to Ledger’s iconic portrayal. In an interview with Collider, Phoenix rest assured that he wasn’t frightened at all.
“I don’t know about that movie or character specifically, but I was thinking about it’s interesting with comics there’s different writers and artists that come on,” Phoenix said. “It’s different than this character from literature being uniquely that. There are different interpretations. It’s so interesting; I was just thinking about it today, it seems so unique in some ways to comic books. I think there’s probably room for that.”
“Maybe it’s like doing a play, like you always hear about people doing something, ‘You should have seen this actor in this performance,’ but then other actors do it and it’s a different kind of film. I think that genre, comic books, kind of lends itself to having different people play the same character and interpret it in a different way,” he continued.
It seems many agreed that Phoenix was a worthy successor to Ledger’s Joker. Similar to his predecessor, Phoenix enjoyed massive praise for his take on the DC villain. He’d later win an Oscar for Best Actor thanks to his performance.
