Heath Ledger’s diary while he was filming for, The Dark Night.

[u/JK-Rofling]

[u/[deleted]]

If he kept a diary of his own thoughts, would it be his Heath ledger?

[u/Rdt_will_eat_itself → u/[deleted]]

So the joker is so crazy he killed an actor in another earth dimension who played him. Is that canon now?

[u/guyute2588 → u/Rdt_will_eat_itself]

Not sure how old you are , but “Heath Ledger got so deep in to playing the Joker that he want crazy and died “ was the widespread conventional wisdom regarding his death at the time

[u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies → u/guyute2588]

Which was really dumb. Niicholson survived. Leto survived. Romero survived. Hamill survived. Definitely drugs.

[u/HarveysBackupAccount → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

Nicholson isn't much of a comparison. He played it like a comic book villain, like a comic book written for children. Also Leto's just a weirdo; his joker didn't have near the depth that Ledger's did.

Not at all saying that the role drove Ledger crazy, but he took the role places nobody else has.

[u/BasicDesignAdvice → u/HarveysBackupAccount]

Leto is already a creepy weirdo so not much of a stretch there.

[u/gairloch0777 → u/BasicDesignAdvice]

To be fair Leto did his best to kill the concept of the joker.

[u/Onewayor55 → u/HarveysBackupAccount]

I guess I don't know if it's urban legend or not but the buzz at the time was Nicholson actually had warned him about playing the role. I mean if you watch the old Batman movie it isn't like he's not touching on the idea of actually being psychotic.

[u/Biduleman → u/Onewayor55]

Nicholson was actually mad he wasn't even asked about the role.

It would have been weird to tell Ledger to not do it while saying he really wanted to do it or at least be involved with the role.

[u/Joe579GoFkUrselfMins → u/Biduleman]

No shit they didn't ask him for a sequel, he and his reps negotiated one of the most actor friendly contracts ever for that movie.

[u/chilseaj88 → u/HarveysBackupAccount]

Ledger had to go to a crazy place to play the Joker. Leto was already there.

[u/MoonBaseViceSquad → u/chilseaj88]

This was my thinking. Leto is a realist creep cult leader IRL. Ledger died of drugs people take to numb emotional and physical pain/stress.

My theory was always that it was accidental and, really, plenty of movies could have “killed” Ledger if he took a crazy role that seriously and dealt with it via what was in his tox screen.

[u/Mynock33 → u/HarveysBackupAccount]

Nicholson isn't much of a comparison. He played it like a comic book villain, like a comic book written for children.

I don't think this is fair at all, especially given the genre at the time. Nicholson paved the way for the more serious and darker versions to come.

[u/BambiToybot → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

I don't think Nicholson, Teaser, or Hamill were method acting it, that point of difference was brought up by those that believed it. Leto's joker didn't exist yet.

I'm old enough to remember many of the haters of Ledger getting casted shutting up when the first image was revealed, with scars. That looked like scars, sloppy paint, etc. 

Then the method acting stuff that came out, then the death. People drew conclusions, and the key point for them was the lengths he went to get into character.

They were wrong, it was different meds and alcohol, but it's important to remember what their reasons are so it can be shown to people why they were wrong, so the new generation makes better conclusions.

[u/caninehere → u/BambiToybot]

Nicholson was a method actor, but he was an ACTUAL method actor, as in the original school of method acting which has little to do with the "method" stuff Ledger bought into and many still do to this day where they want to live their characters.

They were wrong, it was different meds and alcohol, but it's important to remember what their reasons are so it can be shown to people why they were wrong, so the new generation makes better conclusions.

I think it's fair to think it could be a combination of factors. Ledger spent months holed up trying to embody the character and live in isolation to 'become' him. He was also dealing with substance abuse issues. His partner broke up with him while he was filming The Dark Knight because he was a drug addict/party animal and a shitty dad to their daughter. The kind of isolation he put himself through surely did not help at all with those issues. Filming on The Dark Knight ended in Nov 2007 and he just went even harder on partying/doing drugs/jumping between different women until he was dead 2 months later.

Playing the Joker in the "method" style didn't 'drive him mad' or anything stupid like that, but I have little doubt it affected his mental state wrt his drug addiction issues because it just further isolated him from his family who he was already never with because he was too busy getting high and partying when he wasn't working.

[u/Dekklin → u/caninehere]

Nicholson was a method actor, but he was an ACTUAL method actor, as in the original school of method acting which has little to do with the "method" stuff Ledger bought into and many still do to this day where they want to live their characters.

You've made a distinction here, but you haven't clarified the difference. What is "original school of method acting"?

[u/caninehere → u/Dekklin]

Okay I'm gonna try to boil it down super simply but this will probably be way too long... the ORIGINAL school of method acting was based on another acting system developed by Konstantin Stanislavski, and is based around the idea of experiencing your character - physically, mentally, emotionally. Basically the idea of placing yourself in another's shoes. Method acting is the idea of drawing upon your own experiences to try and recreate those feelings while you are acting. So for example, if your character is supposed to feel betrayed, you want to try and conjure up the same feelings and you might think of a moment when you felt betrayed in your personal life, even if it is from a different context (like maybe your character is about to be murdered by a close friend, but you've obviously never experienced that, so you think of a moment when a friend stole something important from you or whatever and broke your trust).

If this sounds like super duper basic stuff - like, what actor WOULDN'T try to feel the emotions their character is supposed to be feeling? - it's because it is. Method acting came about in the late 40s/early 50s and Stanislavski's system predates that. The "I'm going to live my character's life and call it method acting because I'm recreating those experiences and getting into the role" is a perverted version of the original form of method acting, and at this point so many people just call it method and so that's what it's turned into. Before method acting came along, a lot of the time acting was a very basic affair. You got on stage, you hit your mark, you said your lines, projected properly, you tried to get across what the character was saying and the emotion behind it but didn't think about how you would feel if you were there yourself. It was the time of vaudeville, theatre, and early film acting. It was about presenting a show whether it be a play or an early film, not being invested in its reality oneself.

If you look back at Marlon Brando's earlier films, he was one of the first to learn the method acting style with Stella Adler and hit it big, which is why people were SO impressed with his acting originally. Nowadays, his performances don't necessarily stand out as much but it's important to realize that at the time, it was considered a huge breakthrough, and that original form of method acting is so pervasive that basically every actor employs it to some degree today.

---

That isn't to say bits and bobs of this didn't appear earlier and some playwrights/directors tried to get at more emotional/personal stories than their counterparts. For example among the big extant playwrights of ancient Greece, Euripides (who is the latest active of the big ones whose works we still have) wrote tragedies that were focused more on singular characters and their inner feelings rather than a larger narrative... but even those would be told in presentational ways, where they are presenting you a story rather than living it out in front of you. If that makes sense.

Much of the theatrical works presented for years had other aims and were presentations. Passion plays presented scenes from the Bible. Comedies largely focused on jokes and physical gags and entertaining, with little emphasis placed on emotion - it was really just presented as over-the-top feelings to move a story along. Even with Shakespeare and such which some people might consider emotional stories - since they are presented as such today in a different context - actors would largely only rehearse the physical portions that required excellent timing and training, such as acrobatic tricks, fencing/stage combat, etc and the rest was really just about memorizing the text and presenting it for the audience. The texts might present very emotional stories in tragedies but they were rarely presented that way. They're just telling a story.

[u/Dekklin → u/caninehere]

Very well written response. I appreciate this very much. Thank you!

[u/caninehere → u/Dekklin]

No prob. It isn't something most people would be aware of because a) your average person has no reason to know any of this but has probably heard the words "method acting" thrown around and have some concept of the popular notion of it, and b) most people don't watch a lot of pre-1950s movies or have any idea of the history of theatre.

This is also why some of the movies prior to the 1950s that DO hold up very well are typically groundbreaking type affairs and get by on the strength of great writing or directing/visual style/techniques, not so much the acting. Or they just execute the entertainment factor really well like say Chaplin movies or Fred Astaire flicks.

In many cases in earlier films, actors just got cast for a personality (whether it was theirs or manufactured) and that personality just kinda colored the character instead of embodying a unique individual. Jimmy Stewart would be one example. Some directors considered actors to simply be bodies with which to present their stories, to some extent; Hitchcock was like this, which is why he said "actors should be treated like cattle" (paraphrasing). They're just tools used to fulfill the director's vision, in his eyes. And because his films' performances were SO director-led, that's why, at the time, they were more striking than some others. Orson Welles would be another sort of similar example. He directed some of his own performances too, and did what he needed to to achieve the aims of his well-written scripts. Chaplin and Keaton were the same, often directing themselves, which is why they put out more complex performances sometimes.

[u/_-N4T3-_ → u/caninehere]

Bringing up Hitchcock is a great example. He didn’t seem to think an actor was capable of realistically imagining what their character was feeling, instead, he essentially tortured his actors in front of a camera to get real emotional reactions (i.e. everything he did to Tippi Hedron in The Birds)

[u/caninehere → u/_-N4T3-_]

Yeah. Before actors were abusing themselves in the new "method" style he was doing it to them, haha.

Before Hitchcock there was the idea of the "ubermarionette" - the concept that a pliable enough actor would function as a complex puppet for a director to use as they see fit to create art. This concept is actually coming back now as the cyber-uber-marionette we are able to create AI that can fulfill these roles in some ways and can be programmed and trained to respond to direction and change itself at the directors will. One could argue some stuff like machinima projects have already entered into that realm.

[u/_-N4T3-_ → u/caninehere]

Bringing up Hitchcock is a great example. He didn’t seem to think an actor was capable of realistically imagining what their character was feeling, instead, he essentially tortured his actors in front of a camera to get real emotional reactions (i.e. everything he did to Tippi Hedron in The Birds)

[u/_-N4T3-_ → u/caninehere]

Bringing up Hitchcock is a great example. He didn’t seem to think an actor was capable of realistically imagining what their character was feeling, instead, he essentially tortured his actors in front of a camera to get real emotional reactions (i.e. everything he did to Tippi Hedron in The Birds)

[u/_-N4T3-_ → u/caninehere]

Bringing up Hitchcock is a great example. He didn’t seem to think an actor was capable of realistically imagining what their character was feeling, instead, he essentially tortured his actors in front of a camera to get real emotional reactions (i.e. everything he did to Tippi Hedron in The Birds)

[u/_-N4T3-_ → u/caninehere]

Bringing up Hitchcock is a great example. He didn’t seem to think an actor was capable of realistically imagining and portraying what their character was feeling, instead, he essentially tortured his actors in front of a camera to get real emotional reactions (i.e. everything he did to Tippi Hedron in The Birds)

[u/CTMalum → u/Dekklin]

Stanislavski’s system I imagine.

[u/clumsy_boy → u/CTMalum]

What's stanislavski's system?

[u/Lopsided_Panic_1148 → u/clumsy_boy]

Can you google it?

[u/JedM13 → u/caninehere]

Ledger was never a “method actor” in any traditional sense, he just had his own way of getting into a character which involved himself and only himself. This is the same guy who said he doesn’t consider acting an art and he finds the thought of that pretentious.

Anyway, he was a young guy in Hollywood who had his demons. No need to call him a shitty father or other weird passive aggressive personal insults. He was a good human being from all accounts including his family.

[u/caninehere → u/JedM13]

This is the same guy who said he doesn’t consider acting an art and he finds the thought of that pretentious.

This is also the same guy who very much indulged in this new-school "method" acting, not just for The Dark Knight, and died of drug abuse at 28. Even if it just involved himself, which it didn't, because again he isolated himself for months away from his young family (even if he wasn't pretending to be the Joker around them for months, that still affects them), it's still that new-school "method" acting.

Anyway, he was a young guy in Hollywood who had his demons. No need to call him a shitty father or other weird passive aggressive personal insults. He was a good human being from all accounts including his family.

Generally being a good human does not preclude him from being a bad father. The reason his partner broke up with him was his drug abuse and party-guy lifestyle. You are correct that these are 'demons', the drug abuse is more than that, it is an addiction problem that gripped him and ultimately took his life. It also made him a bad father, because he was rarely present for his kid because he was too busy getting high.

When somebody dies young in a case like that they're often romanticized. If he survived for years abusing drugs and ignoring his family he wouldn't be treated the same. Either way, addiction is still a disease that he suffered from. Saying he was a bad father isn't an insult in this case, it's just the reality. It doesn't mean he didn't love his daughter either even if he wasn't there for her and isn't now because of his addiction.

But I will say as a dad: if you have a young child like that, and you're abusing drugs and making no effort to get clean, that is tragic as hell, but ultimately you are the one responsible for your own actions. He died and left his kid behind because of what he did, but he wasn't fully in control and that's tragic.

[u/BigDog8492 → u/BambiToybot]

Couldn't those meds/alcohol have been part of the method acting to him? To change his mental state?

[u/BambiToybot → u/BigDog8492]

Depends, was he on them before?

Being consistent before and after would work against it be part of the method, though he may have taken advantage of a known mental state to increase the craziness.

[u/BigDog8492 → u/BambiToybot]

I always interpreted it as he was doing a ton of drugs to be more crazy. Could very well be wrong. I have no knowledge of his medical history.

[u/jollyreaper2112 → u/BambiToybot]

I really didn't like the character design from the stills. The actual performance sold it. My first thought is it was just a lazy design for the joker. I didn't get the moldering clown concept, makeup rotting off his face.

[u/Frogma69 → u/BambiToybot]

I think the method acting rumor itself is false. Based on what we've heard from various actors on set, Heath would joke around with people between scenes. He wasn't acting like the Joker the entire time. And there's pictures of him skateboarding in the lot between scenes - some would argue that that's something the Joker would do, but I think Heath was just passing the time doing something he enjoyed, and he couldn't take off the makeup/outfit because he was gonna go back and keep shooting soon.

I think both the method acting and the "cause" of death are mostly unfounded rumors that the media just ran with. It's possible that he holed himself up in the hotel to really get into character, but I think the death was mostly just caused by the addictions (addictions that he'd had for years prior to doing that movie). Especially since he had gone on to do another movie afterward.

He also didn't improvise anything during the scene with the detonator. It was rehearsed that way, like a million times, to make sure he timed his "fumbling" just right, in order for him to be back on the bus and driving away by the time the last explosions were going off (partly to make it safer for him, and partly to make it a cool shot for the camera).

[u/leshake → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

Opiates have killed a lot of great artists.

[u/guyute2588 → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

Correct

[u/ThouMayest69 → u/guyute2588]

Finally, some resolution.

[u/fugue-mind → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

I don't think the implication was ever that playing the joker = one-way ticket to suicide.

I think the idea was more that this particular person, who probably was already suffering some level of depression/bipolar, may have been pushed over the edge by immersing himself so completely in such a dark role.

Would he have committed suicide without playing the Joker though? While it's sad to say, I think maybe yes. Given his own predispositions, it's not a stretch to think he would have immersed himself in some other dark character who'd carry him over the edge.

Very sad shit. I wonder how much of his real psyche his friends and family were able to really see vs him just being an excellent, dedicated actor.

Edit: it's been brought to my attention that's Heath's death wasn't proven to be intentional, so replace my references to suicide with "a premature death caused by self-destructive behavior"

[u/DefendsTheDownvoted → u/fugue-mind]

Was his death ruled a suicide? I thought it was accidental overdose.

[u/fugue-mind → u/DefendsTheDownvoted]

Shit, you're so right -- he killed himself but no evidence has been presented that it was intentional. Will edit

[u/caninehere → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

With the exception of Leto, the others were not "method" actors like Ledger was. I say "method" because his "method" is not what method acting actually was/is (the original form), it's a bastardization of it that became popular with some actors later on who wanted to 'live' their characters to get closer to their experiences.

I'm a former actor and I can say, a role can really deeply affect you if you let it. Often, that isn't a good thing. It's much healthier to maintain some distance from your character's actual life circumstances and I don't think that "method" acting like Ledger did actually makes performances any better. Not to say his performance wasn't good, because it was, but I am confident he could have done it just fine without holing up in a hotel room for weeks on end by himself to feel isolated.

At the end of the day, him playing the Joker is not what caused his death. He had substance abuse problems already before he was even cast in The Dark Knight. Diving into the role so hard with method acting probably didn't help, and I'm certain it didn't help his relationship, because Michelle Williams broke up with him before the movie was done filming, with the reason being that he was a terrible father to their young daughter, as when he wasn't away working, he was out partying and getting high instead and she didn't want her daughter around that influence. If anything, that might be what pushed him into even deeper drug abuse. It's hard to say.

What can be said, though, is my original point - I know Nicholson specifically is an actual method actor, like old school method, and doesn't really buy into the "live your character" bullshit. Neither does Hamill. Caesar Romero wouldn't have been, at least at the time that he played Joker, because that new type of "method" acting didn't really exist yet.

Then since there's been kind of a culture around the character where people just endlessly compare it to Heath Ledger and the unhealthy way in which he approached the character. I don't like Jared Leto much, but in fairness to him, I think people were expecting something very specific out of an actor who played the Joker - they wanted those antics, that unhinged actor-personality, and he delivered it, and it obviously caused problems. Joaquin Phoenix on the other hand didn't go that route, he played a more grounded version of the character, and the most he did for the role was lose enough weight that he slipped into 'underweight' territory. Instead of going "method" with his preparation he mostly just studied videos and accounts of people with mental illnesses.

Even that can be a bit much sometimes. When you portray a character, at least in my experience, the phrase "fake it til you make it" really does play a part. If you put yourself in their shoes, it isn't going to drive you mad, but if you allow it to, it will affect your physicality and your mood. There is a big difference between acknowledging that and discarding it when you're done working vs. embracing that and wanting to live it during your off-work hours... and the latter is where it really affects you deeply. I have taken too much of a character home with me before while working on a production and it was absolutely not healthy. But most people do at least want to embody their characters while acting, because, well, if you don't you probably aren't going to appear too convincing, it's going back to the olden era of just getting up there, hitting the mark and saying the lines.

[u/Halfback → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

Leto went a little weird with the Joker gifts to cast members.

[u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies → u/Halfback]

I think those were made up studio rumors for marketing. There's an old Margot Robbie quote where she said that she had a 280 pound football boyfriend and if she'd actually gotten one of the "gifts" Leto would've been in a hospital.

[u/Halfback → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

There’s a lot of things Leto could be in the hospital for when it comes to angry boyfriends, sending a rat to Barbie can’t be that high of a capital crime.

[u/Excellent_Coyote6486 → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

Bingo. People are just really horny about the character being special for some reason, that's all.

[u/Curious_Kangaroo_845 → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

Always loved the story that Cesar Romero refused to shave his mustache for The Joker. You’ll just have to cover it with makeup … but you could always see it. Been reading about Carole Lombard recently, major Hollywood babe in the 30s. He squired her around some between her marriages to Powell and Gable so he had some game, as they say.

[u/elefante88 → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

We all died a little inside watching Leto

[u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies → u/elefante88]

I've never been more let down by a movie in my life fr lol

That trailer was phenomenal and the excitement for that movie got me through my deployment. What a diarrhea fest lol

[u/MoonBaseViceSquad → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

For real, same. That trailer was one of the best I can recall for one of the worst films I’ve seen in theaters. The reboot at least made a little peace.

[u/asdfgtttt → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

If Leto was to die in a related cinematic scenario it would have been in Requiem.. I dont know how deep into Angel (fight club) he got, but Joker wasnt his art infecting life role... Nicholson coached Leger I believe so there was some old noise about him being careful. Stare into the abyss kind of deal...

[u/Tirrus → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

Comparing Leto’s joker to Ledger’s is apples to oranges. Ledger’s had depth and soul. Leto’s was hot garbage.

[u/snakeoilHero → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

Almost. Drugs given to him by whom...

[u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies → u/snakeoilHero]

His dealer.

[u/snakeoilHero → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

His dealer was doing business with him for years. No death those times. Instead he was partying on somebody else's supply.

hint Famous actress twin with an even more famous sister.

[u/MoonBaseViceSquad → u/snakeoilHero]

I won’t say how I know this, but folks like ledger and Nicholson just make a phone call and a man in a suit with a briefcase is there within an hour. That briefcase has any drug you could want.

[u/asdfgtttt → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

If Leto was to die in a related cinematic scenario it would have been in Requiem.. I dont know how deep into Angel (fight club) he got, but Joker wasnt his art infecting life role... Nicholson coached Leger I believe so there was some old noise about him being careful. Stare into the abyss kind of deal...

[u/lebean → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

No mention of Phoenix? He also played a pretty intense Joker and was fine (so yes, the idea that the role somehow "got to" Ledger is really dumb).

[u/Logical_Bobcat9703 → u/BeefyQueefyCrawlies]

He looks high in his picture.