Barry Keoghan Says Heath Ledger Was the Best Joker, and Following in His Footsteps is Intimidating | CPT PPP Coverage

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Barry Keoghan made quite an impact in a short, blurry debut as Joker in The Batman, and he says it is very intimidating playing the role.

Barry Keoghan is the latest in a long line of actors to take on the role of the iconic Batman villain, Joker. While his appearance in The Batman was brief, it is clear that Keoghan’s big moment as Gotham’s Clown Prince is only just beginning, and he will likely take a more prominent role in The Batman 2. When it comes to stepping into the shoes of so many great actors, Keoghan says there is a lot of pressure and feels intimidated by the memory of one particular Joker actor — Heath Ledger.

Barry Keoghan managed to appear in both a DC project and a Marvel one in a short space of time, having already appeared in Eternals prior to his post-credits scene appearance in The Batman. While it seems he has more work to do in both superhero franchises, there is a lot more pressure when it comes to playing someone as iconic as the Joker. Keoghan told Collider:

“It’s very intimidating [playing the Joker]. Heath Ledger was the best for me. So you have a lot of people to draw from and that. But again, you bring your version to it. That’s what I do with any character I play, is no one has seen my version of it. And again, going back to it, I don’t want to be like so-and-so, and follow that method and that method. I want to do me. I want to bring my version, because I feel that is new in a way, and unique, that when you bring your version no one has seen it. And that may make people relate to it. So it was intimidating, but I was excited for it.”

Related:Matt Reeves Breaks Down ‘Insidious’ Joker in The Batman’s Future

Why Did Matt Reeves Just Tease The Joker and Not Show Him Clearly?

Many Batman movies have made a tease of their coming villains, and The Batman was no exception. However, the Joker was originally set to appear in another scene in the movie, which was ultimately cut. While there has been no official word on whether the Joker will be the main villain in The Batman 2, which is currently in very early development, director Matt Reeves has explained how he approached making another unique iteration of the character that has been played several times on the big screen. He previously said:

“He’s held in this very suspenseful way, away from you visually. But I wanted to create an iteration of him that felt distinctive and new, but went right back to the roots. So he’s very much out of the Conrad Veidt mold and that idea of the silent film of The Man Who Laughs. He can never stop smiling. And it made Mike [Marino] and I think about — I was talking about The Elephant Man because I love David Lynch. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here where it’s not something where he fell in a vat of chemicals or it’s not the [Christopher] Nolan thing where he has these scars and we don’t know where they came from. What if this is something that he’s been touched by from birth and that he has a congenital disease that refuses to let him stop smiling? And he’s had this very dark reaction to it, and he’s had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way and he knows how to get into your head.'”

Keoghan’s short but striking introduction to his version of the Joker had many people talking when The Batman made its debut earlier this year, and there is no doubt that when he does reappear, there will be once again many debates about where he sits in the pantheon of Jokers to have graced theaters over the years.