Was Heath Ledger’s Joker inspired by Sid Vicious?
Once Heath Ledger’s Joker took to the silver screen in Christopher Nolan’s iconic comic book movie The Dark Knight, the world of superhero cinema was changed forever. Now, a villain cannot land in the world of DC and Marvel without being compared to the clown-faced killer, a performance for which the late Ledger was posthumously awarded an Academy Award, beating out rivals Philip Seymour Hoffman, Josh Brolin and Robert Downey Jr.
Thanks to Ledger’s compelling performance, Joker has become considered one of the most celebrated characters in superhero cinema. Donning the insidious painted face of a clown, Ledger’s villain is a crime lord with an insane taste for total chaos, often leading the city of Gotham, as well as Batman himself, to nightmarish scenarios of death, destruction and violence.
Whilst the likes of Cesar Romero, Joaquin Phoenix and Jack Nicholson have each delivered stellar performances as the villain, it is Ledger who changed the character forever, giving a truly menacing performance as the clown crime lord. An enigmatic gangster who cared little for financial gain, Ledger allegedly based his performance on Tom Waits and the protagonist in the Stanley Kubrick movie A Clockwork Orange.
In addition to this, Ledger revealed in a 2007 interview with MTV that he also used Sid Vicious as a key piece of inspiration. “A Clockwork Orange was a very early starting point for Christian and I,” he told the publication, referencing his Dark Knight co-star Christian Bale, “But we kind of flew far away from that pretty quickly and into another world altogether. And Sid Vicious, yeah, I guess so. There’s a bit of everything in him”.
Continuing, Ledger admits there wasn’t a single inspiration for his character: “There’s nothing that consistent. It was an exhausting process. I actually had quite a bit of time off between scenes — weeks sometimes. But it was required because whenever I was working, it exhausted me to the bone”.
Infamously burned out by the demanding role, it is a common misconception that his part playing the Batman villain led directly to his death. In actuality, Ledger suffered from insomnia long before he took on the Joker role. Taking anti-anxiety and pain medication to try and get over the condition, Ledger’s situation worsened after working on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, where he caught atypical pneumonia and was prescribed more pills. Ledger later passed away due to an accidental overdose of prescription medication.
Still, the Dark Knight role certainly took its toll, concluding his interview with the publication by admitting: “At the end of the day, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I was absolutely wrecked. If I had to do that every day, I couldn’t have done what I did. The schedule really permitted me to exhaust myself”.
To this day, Ledger’s performance is considered a benchmark for superhero actors, with Jared Leto, Joaquin Phoenix and Barry Keoghan each unable to match the Dark Knight actor’s majesty.