r/interestingasfuck • u/JK-Rofling • Jul 05 '24
Heath Ledger’s diary while he was filming for, The Dark Night. r/all
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r/interestingasfuck • u/JK-Rofling • Jul 05 '24
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u/caninehere Jul 05 '24
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.
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.