Joaquin Phoenix Almost Played The Joker in The Dark Knight

Originally posted on Men's Journal | By Griff Griffin | Last updated Oct 29, 2024 5:31 PM ET

Before he played the starring role in 2019’s Joker, Joaquin Phoenix was close to landing the same role in The Dark Knight.

The actor recently revealed The Dark Knight’s director Chris Nolan approached him to play Batman’s primary villain during the preliminary round of casting.

However, Phoenix turned down the part, reasoning that it was too soon for him. “I wasn’t ready then,” he said during an interview on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin.

Warner Bros.

“I remember I talked to Chris Nolan about The Dark Knight and that didn’t happen for whatever reason,” Phoenix said. “I wasn’t ready then. That’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘What is in me that’s not doing this?’ And it’s not about me. There’s something else. There’s another person who is going to do something…I can’t imagine what it would be if we didn’t have Heath Ledger’s performance in that film, right?”

“My feeling was I shouldn’t do this, but maybe [Chris] also was like, ‘He’s not the guy.'”

That year, Phoenix only released one film, Two Lovers, which grossed just $9.8m at the box office. However, if he didn’t turn down the original Joker role, he likely wouldn’t have starred in 2019’s Joker, which grossed over $1b.

Ledger went on to win a posthumous Oscar as best supporting actor in The Dark Knight, so both Phoenix and Nolan’s instincts turned out to be right.

This article first appeared on Men's Journal and was syndicated with permission.

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