To prepare for his now iconic role as the Joker in The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger famously lived alone in a London hotel for a month. In that time, he kept a notebook that served as a diary and scrapbook. For a documentary Too Young to Die, Heath’s father Kim Ledger went through the book and talked us through it. Here’s the first video released from the documentary:
Oddly enough, Kim speaks English, but it’s unintelligible because it’s obscured by a French voice-over. So we need a translation of French so we can understand his English. Everybody got that? Good. Here’s the voice-over:
This is the Joker’s diary. In order to inhabit his character, he locked himself up in a hotel room for weeks. He would do that. He liked to dive into his characters, but this time he really took it up a notch.
The hospital scene is interesting because when he was a kid, his sister Kate liked to dress him up as a nurse. He was really funny like that. He also was in the movie.
This is a make-up test which was done eight months before. Before the end of the shooting he wrote “bye bye” on the back of the page. It was hard to see this.
In case you had trouble seeing the pages, I made some screen captures of the diary.
[Via thefilmstage.com via Reddit]
What do you think of the Joker’s Diary? Creepy? Cool? All of the above?
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Heath Ledger’s Inspiration for the Joker
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<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="37628 ">6 Comments
Wow, he was really dedicated. Came through in his performance though.
That "Bye Bye" at the end is pretty ominous.
That is very intense. I agree with Alex that this experience came through in his performance.
I think it's both creepy (but not necessarily in a bad way) AND cool. It's creepy on the surface but pretty cool in a sense that it helped him prepare for the role. Plus, creepy is as creepy does and the Joker is one of the creepiest of movie characters, so it looks like Ledger's method of preparation only worked to the benefit of The Dark Knight.
Like any good actor…the "method" is not the same from one person to another. They all have their "things" and it looks like this diary only worked to his advantage. Can't knock the material for that. He killed it in his role so well that I cannot think of anyone else who could have played Joker. Ledger claimed it and made it his own.
~Nicole
Ok, the Blogger comment window appeared where I left my comment and then the Disqus window appeared when I submitted the one through Blogger — weird. Maybe the second time's the charm, lol, here we go:
I think it's both creepy (but not necessarily in a bad way) AND cool. It's creepy on the surface but pretty cool in a sense that it helped him prepare for the role. Plus, creepy is as creepy does and the Joker is one of the creepiest of movie characters, so it looks like Ledger's method of preparation only worked to the benefit of The Dark Knight.
Like any good actor…the "method" is not the same from one person to another. They all have their "things" and it looks like this diary only worked to his advantage. Can't knock the material for that. He killed it in his role so well that I cannot think of anyone else who could have played Joker. Ledger claimed it and made it his own.
~Nicole
Thanks for trying again. Sorry about the mixup, and I liked your insight