Heath Ledger’s ‘Joker diary’ from his time working on Dark Knight has been publicly unveiled. The late star’s rendition of the classic comic book villain wowed audiences across the globe with his ability to immerse himself fully into the mindset of the character. His impressive upstaging of Jack Nicholson’s Joker left many feeling that his accidental overdoes had more sinister ties with his character preparation leading up to the Dark Knight.
Prior to his death Heath Ledger was interviewed by FHM and remarked on how seriously he had taken getting into character:
“I just locked myself away and formed a little diary and experimented with voices … I ended up making him within the realm of a psychopath kind of like zero empathy or very little to no conscience towards his acts which is fun because there’s no real limits on their boundaries to what he would say or how he would say something or what he would do … it’s always a very personal process in terms of how you land in your characters shoes, so to speak, it’s a combination of reading all the comic books I could and the script, and then just really closing my eyes and meditating on it.”
After much speculation Ledger’s father, Kim, has finally allowed the public access to the character diary Heath Ledger made prior to the 2008 films release. This”haunting” journal features drawings, photos, writing, and other medium inspired by the Joker, with Ledger taking personality inspiration from Malcolm McDowell’s Clockwork Orange character. The amount of depth Ledger poured into his character almost blurs the line between where Ledger begins and Joker ends.
http://youtu.be/j04X3B9-dLU
From the video clip posed on Reddit Thursday, Kim comments on how emotional it was reading the entries in the Joker diary, particularly the last entry which had the words “bye bye” scrawled across the page. Ledger’s father said it was “hard to see this” with its content being so close to home.
The Joker diary is a remarkable reminder of just how dedicated the 28 movie star was to achieving perfection in his character portrayals. It’s a rare but haunting opportunity to see all the work that goes into acting and essentially becoming a completely different person.
