Why Heath Ledger was beaten up on the set of ‘The Dark Knight’
Only a handful of actors will bring their A-game to the superhero genre as much as Heath Ledger did in The Dark Knight. Whereas most comic book fans knew The Joker as the Clown Prince of Crime, Ledger’s anarchist approach to the character made him feel like a terrorist that could realistically pop up in the wild someday. Since he inhabited the character in full, Ledger was also willing to suffer for his art.
When approaching the role with Christopher Nolan, Ledger had an intense process of getting himself into character. During pre-production, Ledger underwent a significant delve into his psyche, spending days in a hotel room alone, staring at the walls and laughing subtly to himself.
Right after depicting one incarnation of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There, Ledger modelled his cadence and tone of voice off of various musicians, carrying himself the same way that Sid Vicious and Tom Waits approached their public persona. Once he was confronted with Christian Bale’s take on The Caped Crusader, things took a turn for the worse.
Having been training rigorously to establish the physique of Batman, Bale had become a trained fighter and would have been able to break someone in two if the time had called for it. When filming the interrogation scene, though, Ledger insisted that Bale hit him with the same ferocity that he would if the cameras weren’t playing.
According to Bale, it was Ledger’s suggestion to not hold anything back, telling The Hollywood Reporter: “He was kinda egging me on. I was saying, ‘You know what, I don’t need to hit you. It’s going to look just as good if I don’t.’ And he’s going, ‘Go on. Go on. Go on….’ He was slamming himself around, and there were tiled walls inside of that set which were cracked and dented from him hurling himself into them.”
That commitment is on the screen as well. Even though there’s a verbal cat-and-mouse game between Batman and The Joker throughout the entire scene, the physical toll that Ledger brings upon himself looks painful, especially when the sheer force of the blows breaks pieces of the tile.
Whether it was intended in the script or not, Ledger’s choice to laugh through all of the pain just makes the scene that much more alluring. Even though Batman is physically overpowering him, it’s clear to the viewer that The Joker holds all the cards, playing to The Caped Crusader’s strength and sheer brute by toying with his emotions.
That dedication did come at a price for Ledger once the film wrapped. While he would be awarded an Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actor’, Ledger would be found dead a few months after production, passing away in his sleep of what is said to be an overdose of prescription drugs used to help him sleep.
Although The Joker did steal the show for both fans and critics, Bale never concerned himself with being upstaged by Ledger, saying, “I have no problem with him competing with somebody else. Because that can only make for a better movie if you have these other fascinating characters arriving on the scene, too.”
