Gary Oldman Felt Heath Ledger’s Joker Could’ve Been His Role Years Ago
The Dark Knight trilogy saw Gary Oldman step into the role of a good guy. This was a change of pace for the actor, who was used to playing villains throughout his career.
But when he looked at Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker, Oldman felt it wasn’t too unlike the characters he used to play himself in his younger years.
How Heath Ledger’s Joker could’ve been a ‘Gary Oldman’ role back in the day
Out of all the roles he played, Oldman once admitted that he found portraying Commissioner Jim Gordon among his most difficult. Commissioner Gordon was as moral as they came in Christopher Nolan’s Batman series. But Oldman confided that playing someone so good was harder than it looked.
“The good guy, the incorruptible, straight as an arrow Jim Gordon,” Oldman once reflected on BBC Radio 1. “And it was quite challenging. Yeah, it’s that thing of turning up and Batman’s already got there first. You’re a detective, but you don’t really get a chance to do any detecting because Batman’s done it all for you before you get there. So it’s a sort of … it was enormous.”
In a 2011 interview with Shortlist, Oldman delved further into his experience as Jim Gordon in The Dark Knight. There, he’d watch the late Heath Ledger portray a character similar to6 the bad guys he’d play back in the day.
“In a sense, The Dark Knight is a good example of the change in the roles I’ve been offered,” he said. “In that film, I’m the 50-year-old police commissioner while wonderful, young Heath Ledger is bouncing off the walls as The Joker. Now, had that part come along 15 years earlier, people may have said, ‘That’s a Gary Oldman role.’ It’s an age thing. I think about it like a vase and some flowers — I was happy to sit there and be the vase while Heath was the flowers.”
Gary Oldman and Heath Ledger both might’ve had the same idea for this improvised Joker scene
One of the most talked about moments in The Dark Knight is the sequence where the Joker is in a prison cell. He’s seen clapping exaggeratedly among the cops and criminals around him, which was improvised by Ledger. When Oldman first saw the take, it reminded him of a classic movie.
“Although, it’s funny: there was one occasion when we were filming the scene where The Joker is sitting in the holding cell and Commissioner Gordon comes in to find out he’s been promoted. And there’s that shot of The Joker applauding from behind the bars. I went up to Heath afterwards and told him, ‘You really reminded me of Alex [Malcolm McDowell] in the opening shot of A Clockwork Orange just then,'” Oldman said.
Ledger’s response would make Oldman think the actor specifically had A Clockwork Orange in mind for the scene.
“He said, ‘I was just watching that film in my trailer!’ I think that was probably one of his big inspirations for that scene,” Oldman remembered.
Gary Oldman had to see Christopher Nolan personally to learn the ending of ‘The Dark Knight’
Nolan is known for being very secretive about his projects. So much so that some crew members actually had to go to Oldman’s office to read the script for The Dark Knight. The Oscar-winner, however, would be among the few who Nolan trusted with a copy of the script. Only Oldman’s script didn’t include the ending.
“Yes, I went along and talked to him in person about the ending. Then I locked it away up here [in his head],” he explained.
