Behind the Mask: Heath Ledger's Transformation Into The Joker

Heath Ledger playing the Joker is arguably one of the best acting performances someone has ever witnessed on the screen. Even though we all enjoyed the threatening presence of this masked clown, Heath Ledger had a hard time filming the movie.

Let's explore why his acting performance was so special and how he prepared himself to become this iconic movie figure.

Changing character

Heath Ledger himself was by many people described as a charming and kind person, unlike the character he played in the movie ''The Dark Knight''. At the beginning and right after every recording day, he would give a hug to every crew member on the set of the movie.

This is obviously the opposite kind of behavior that his fictional character, ‘’the Joker’’ showed in the movie. To change your personality and behavior in such a way as soon as the camera turns on requires a lot of mental effort. It requires a mind that’s in the state of flow.

A force of anarchy and chaos

You could definitely tell he was in the flow state while acting. The way he portrayed a charismatic sociopath who left trails of destruction everywhere he went was brilliant. The more the Joker suffered from the pain of physical abuse, the more he seemed to enjoy it. Joker was like a force of anarchy and chaos. A sociopath with zero empathy for his victims. A criminal with no purpose. Every crime, every robbery, every murder, he did what he did just simply ‘’for the fun of it’’.

This made him a genuinely terrifying and unpredictable antagonist. No one in Gotham was ever able to predict what his next move would be. He could’ve been at any place at any time where there were just enough people for him to abuse and kill. Money and materialism had absolutely zero value for the Joker. He just wanted to watch the world burn.

Being a nice person in real life and then playing a character with such crazy character traits, concludes that Ledger must’ve been in another mental world while acting. Forgetting everything he knew about his own life and personality to completely lose himself in the mind of his fictional character.

The movie ''Joker'' (2019) is like the answer to the same question every person had in mind while watching Heath Ledger's Joker: How did he become this way? Arthur Fleck was treated very badly by his fellow citizens. That's how he became that way. From Heath's joker, nobody knows how he became that way. Maybe these two had the same upbringing...

Do I really look like a guy with a plan?

‘’Do I really look like a guy with a plan?’’. No, the Joker indeed didn’t look like a guy with a plan. His smeared make-up, wild green hair, and the scars on his face that reflected his deranged personality, had the intention of making everyone he came across with think that he had absolutely no clue what he was doing.

But everyone who watched the movie knew he always had a plan. A plan for every situation. You can’t improvise a bank robbery with four guys, making them all kill each other in the end, so you’re the only one left with all the stolen money. The Joker had a plan for literally every crime he committed. He knew how all these ''civilized people'' would all eat each other when something doesn’t go according to the plan. Then the truth comes above the water that every person is inherently selfish and will stab even their loved ones in the back when pushed to his/her limits. In other words: Everything becomes chaos.

The Joker aimed to prove this by setting up a series of sadistic social experiments. The Joker was a visionary because he understood the dark side that lies within each person, right before anyone else could see that.

''When the chips are down, these 'civilized' people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve.''

~ The Joker when interrogated by Batman

 

‘’Why so Serious?’’ is a line from the Joker that mocks the seriousness of law and order within society nowadays. The Joker challenged the citizens of Gotham to face a world where anarchy and chaos regulates the course of events, instead of law and order. The Joker delivered this line while telling his victim one of his many made-up stories of how he got his scars. His own father supposedly carved these scars on the Joker’s face when he was just a young kid. ‘’Let’s put a smile on that face’’, his father said. After many years of maturing, the Joker could finally see the funny side of that event: ‘’Now I’m always smiling’’.

Where does he come from?

The remarkable thing about the Joker is his origin story. No one in Gotham knew where this face-painted clown came from. One day out of the blue he was just there, committing senseless crimes just for fun. He deliberately told each of his victims another origin story of himself, each story adapted to the victim’s fear.

''Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what do with one if I caught it. You know I just do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans. You know, they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.''

~ The Joker talking to Harvey Dent about how everyone tries so hard to control the things around them they simply cannot control.

Crawling into the Joker's mind

Not only got Heath Ledger in the flow state by filming the scenes of the movie. The ‘fun’ all started when the actor locked himself up for six weeks in a hotel room, in order to prepare himself for the role. "It's a combination of reading all the comic books I could that were relevant to the script and then just closing my eyes and meditating on it,’’ he said about those six weeks.

Heath Ledger basically visualized his joker performance prior to the shooting days, after drawing inspiration from the comic books. We are not really sure if this was very positive for his mental health, but in any case, this was an ideal tactic to mentally prepare himself for his role. By visualizing, experimenting with his voice and practicing his character traits, Ledger programmed his subconscious mind with all the necessary information in order to play his version of the Joker, exactly how he had it in his own mind.

 

Rest in peace Heath Ledger.

 

The best scene in ‘’The Dark Knight’’. Batman realizes how helpless he is while trying to save the woman he loves. The more the Joker gets beaten up, the more the Joker seems to enjoy it. All of Batman’s physique power, all his strength, it does nothing to a psychopathic man with no soul, mentally numb to any sensation of physical pain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jane6C4rIwc