By Michaela Gordoni
Actor Michael Caine recalled what it was like to see Heath Ledger as The Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT in his memoir Don’t Look Back, You’ll Trip Over.
“He was a lovely guy, very gentle and unassuming,” Caine wrote about the actor, who died in 2008 before the movie was released. “I wondered how he was going to play the Joker, especially as Jack Nicholson’s take had been so iconic. Brilliantly, Heath ramped up the character’s psychotic side rather than going for one-liners.”
“His Joker was deeply, deeply warped and damaged, though you never find out exactly why, or what he’s really looking for,” the ALFIE actor said.
The first time Caine saw Ledger rehearse as The Joker he was taken aback.
“As Alfred says to Bruce, ‘Some men just want to watch the world burn,'” Caine wrote. “And that was Heath’s version of the character: the smeared make-up, the weird hair, the strange voice. It was chilling. Absolutely floored me the first time I saw him in action — I was terrified!” Caine told the press in 2007 that he was so shocked that he actually forgot all of his lines.
While Caine felt the chills seeing Ledger as Joker, he didn’t feel like that about the actor outside of the set.
“He and Christian [Bale] were good friends and always having fun together. And then he was transformed into this scheming monster, driving a whole city towards mayhem,” Caine wrote. “Looking back, I think Heath’s excellence made all of us raise our game.”
“The psychological battle between the Joker and Batman is completely riveting. Are they in any way the same? What nudges one man to do good, and the other to do evil?” he asked. “The Joker wants to torment Bruce by convincing him that they’re two of a kind.”
Caines was “astonished” by Ledger’s performance in the scene where Joker crashes Batman’s party.
“He comes in… I was astonished. I thought it was an incredible performance, really,” Caine previously told Sky TV.
Movieguide®’s review says Joker “is psychotic and mean from the beginning. He’s shown to be psychotic and mean several times. A little character growth would have helped him a great deal. Those who think playing psychotic and mean is great acting will love this role.”
When Ledger died at 28, Michael Caine was heartbroken.
“It still makes me sad to think of it, more than fifteen years in,” he wrote. “An accidental overdose, just tragic…I hadn’t even made ZULU when I was that age. You think of what he might have gone on to achieve, it’s just heart-breaking.”
“We were all terribly shocked, and it made doing the publicity for THE DARK KNIGHT that summer much more intense, because all the journalists wanted to talk about his death,” Caine explained. “I was so pleased when he was awarded the posthumous Oscar, because it must have been at least some sort of comfort for his poor family.”
As Caine, his co-stars and the crew saw Ledger work on set, they were hoping he’d win an Oscar. It was difficult for them to see him win one only after his death.
“It’s a performance for the ages, and even though his career was cut short so soon, he’ll be remembered as a great actor, I believe,” Caine wrote.
Yes, Caine, he certainly will.
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