It’s no secret that Heath Ledger stole the show in The Dark Knight with his performance of the Joker. His take on the twisted villain was so loved it even earned him a posthumous Oscar win. In an interview with Empire magazine during the production of The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger talk about what he did to prepare for the role — “I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary.”
Now we can take a look into that very diary, thanks to a documentary series “Too Young To Die”, which featured an episode on Heath Ledger last summer. In the video, Heath Ledger’s father Kim Ledger flips through some of the pages and talks about his son’s work. It can be hard to hear him over the translation so here’s rough transcript:
This was the 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 to a whole new level.
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.
If it’s not too personal, it’d be great to see some of this included in the The Dark Knight Trilogy: Ultimate Collector’s Edition Blu-ray boxset which is scheduled to come out this Fall.
SOURCE: Uproxx
