The Joker Profile

The archenemy of the superhero Batman, the Joker is a master criminal whose characterization has varied from a violent and murderous sociopath, causing chaos and committing crimes for his own amusement, to a goofy and virtually harmless trickster-thief.

The Joker's real identity is unknown, and there have been different takes on his origin; the most common variation depicts him as falling into a vat of chemicals which bleach his skin, turn his hair green and his lips bright red, giving him the appearance of a clown.

He is highly intelligent and very skilled in the fields of chemistry and engineering

The Joker has cheated death numerous times, even in seemingly inescapable and lethal situations. Though he has been seen caught in explosions, been shot repeatedly, dropped from lethal heights, electrocuted, and so on, the Joker always returns to once again wreak havoc

Heath Ledger as The Joker: Heath Ledger described the Joker as a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy". Nolan had wanted to work with Ledger on a number of projects in the past, but had been unable to do so.

When Ledger saw Batman Begins, he realized a way to make the character work consistent with the film's tone,and Nolan agreed with his anarchic interpretation.

To prepare for the role, Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the character's posture, voice, and psychology, and kept a diary, in which he recorded the Joker's thoughts and feelings.While he initially found it difficult,

Ledger eventually generated a voice unlike that of Jack Nicholson's character in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film.

He was also given Batman: The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, which he "really tried to read and put it down".

Ledger also cited A Clockwork Orange and Sid Vicious as "a very early starting point for Christian [Bale] and I. But we kind of flew far away from that pretty quickly and into another world altogether."There’s a bit of everything in him. There’s nothing that consistent,"

Ledger said, adding that "There are a few more surprises to him."Before Ledger was confirmed to play the Joker in July 2006,[Paul Bettany, Lachy Hulme, Adrien Brody, Steve Carell,and Robin Williams publicly expressed interest in the role.

On January 22, 2008, after he had completed filming The Dark Knight, Ledger died suddenly, leading to intense press attention and memorial tributes. "It was tremendously emotional, right when he passed, having to go back in and look at him every day," Nolan recalled.

"But the truth is, I feel very lucky to have something productive to do, to have a performance that he was very, very proud of, and that he had entrusted to me to finish."

All of Ledger's scenes appear as he completed them in the filming; in editing the film, Nolan added no "digital effects" to alter Ledger's actual performance posthumously.

Nolan has dedicated the film in part to Ledger's memory, as well as to the memory of technician Conway Wickliffe, who was killed during a car accident while preparing one of the film's stunts.

Along with other film critics, audience members, and many of Ledger's colleagues in the film community, his costars Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Caine have called for a posthumous Academy Award in recognition of Ledger's achievement as an actor in this film

Even film critic David Denby, who does not praise the film overall in his pre-release review in The New Yorker, evaluates Ledger's work highly, describing his performance as both "sinister and frightening" and Ledger as "mesmerising in every scene", concluding: "His performance is a heroic, unsettling final act: this young actor looked into the abyss."