How Heath Ledger's Joker presented a problem for Christian Bale

Christian Bale has praised the performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight but admits he was worried at the time that Batman would be overshadowed by the villain of the piece due to his co-star's brilliance.

We are now into 2022 and the world has moved on from Heath Ledger's depiction of the Joker in 2008 comic book classic the Dark Knight, just as the viewing audience moved on to him from Jack Nicholson's performance of the character in the original Batman.

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Joaquin Phoenix became the talk of Tinsel Town after he played his own incarnation of The Joker in Todd Phillips' standalone Joker movie. He would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, as for the first time in cinematic history, the world's most famous comic book villain was put centre stage as the main character.

For many people, however, Ledger's groundbreaking performance as The Joker will go down as one of the greatest in history and arguably one which allowed for comic book movies to be taken a little more seriously as acting auteurs began lining up to take on roles for DC and Marvel.

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The character is undoubtedly the highlight of The Dark Knight, and Bale has explained that he and director Christopher Nolan had to subsequently make Batman more interesting to compete with The Joker.

"Heath Ledger, what a pleasure and what a performance. To see him and to see how much he put into the Joker," Bale told GQ as he broke down his most famous roles.

"I said, this is absolutely fantastic but, do we have a problem here? The thing with Batman is that the villains are always more interesting. Batman is very close to being a villain himself so let's never let him become dull by comparison.

"And I'm sitting there thinking 'I'm feeling a little dull by comparison because Heath is killing this!' But I'm so proud of that film, I love it, it's absolutely extraordinary and it was such a pleasure to work with Heath."

Heath Ledger's hidden talent

Bale recalled a story during the production of the movie that saw him, Ledger and various members of the crew compete at go-karting.

Naturally, the stunt drivers were tipped as obvious winners, but Ledger ended up winning, only to reveal afterwards that his dad was actually a go-kart driver.

"He was a wonderful go-kart driver. He beat all the stunt drivers, he was quick!" Bale recalled.

"When we went to the track we thought well, all the stunt guys will win, and suddenly Heath wins and very quietly announces that his dad was a go-kart racer. A very talented individual and great soul to be around. I miss him greatly."