Why Heath Ledger goaded Christian Bale to hit him on the set of ‘The Dark Knight’
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight has been lauded as one of the greatest comic book adaptations ever made, and a huge part of its success was down to the Academy Award-winning performance of Heath Ledger as the Joker. Christian Bale knew he needed to up his game opposite his co-star’s ferocious spin on the Clown Prince of Crime, and they dived in headfirst from their very first scene together.
The first time Ledger and Bale worked together on the Batman Begins sequel came as part of the interrogation scene, ensuring that there was no time for either performer to ease themselves into one of the most heated exchanges in the film. As a result, Ledger actively encouraged his colleague to hit him for real in order to add further layers of realism to the heated confrontation.
Having already headlined one Nolan-helmed Batman blockbuster, Bale knew that The Dark Knight was being treated as “serious drama”. Ledger may have spent months preparing for the role, but as Bale revealed to The Hollywood Reporter, it didn’t consume him: “When he was in the makeup and the garb he was in character the whole time; and when he took it off he was absolutely fantastic company to be around.”
Skirting the thin line between servicing the screenplay and going all-out to genuinely throw his colleague around, Bale reflected on what was laid out on the page: “As you see in the movie, Batman starts beating the Joker and realizes that this is not your ordinary foe. Because the more I beat him the more he enjoys it. The more I’m giving him satisfaction. Heath was behaving in a very similar fashion.”
Despite training extensively for the action scenes and fight sequences, Bale still found himself somewhat taken aback when Ledger urged him to start really laying in with his blows: “He was kinda egging me on. I was saying, ‘You know what, I really don’t need to actually hit you. It’s going to look just as good if I don’t,'” he said. “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. His commitment was total.”
Fortunately, Bale wasn’t concerned that his stoic Bruce Wayne was in danger of being upstaged as The Dark Knight‘s main attraction, even if he was aware that the title hero doesn’t always get the chance to steal the spotlight: “No, not at all. Because it was exactly the point that I had a problem with in all of the other Batman movies. I asked myself, ‘Well, how come it’s always been that he’s the most boring character?’ I’d never found him to be intriguing at all.”
The title hero shared that he had “no problem with him competing with anyone else because that can only make for a better movie”. As it transpired, Ledger’s unforgettable Joker was a genre-defining screen partner for the Caped Crusader.
