3. Adrien Brody
Heath Ledger may have picked up an Oscar coming out of The Joker, but this actor would have one going in. Adrien Brody became the youngest Best Actor Academy Award winner at 29 for his performance as Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman in Roman Polanski's The Pianist; according to various sources, he also met with Christopher Nolan about playing The Joker before Heath Ledger was cast in the role. His willingness to go full Method in order to capture Szpilman's plight - spending four hours practising the piano a day, selling his car, moving to Europe, and losing 30 pounds in weight - resonates with Ledger's commitment to The Joker. Brody's lanky 6'1" frame seems intuitively like a good fit for the character, but, while his acting abilities are not in doubt, can he manage to unique blend of creepy and crazy that make The Joker so distinctive? Well, as as a child-like simpleton in The Village, an ambiguously insane time-traveling mental patient in The Jacket, and a depressed con man in The Brother's Bloom, Brody's distinguished that he has, above all else, range. Here's the trailer to High School - released last year to almost no aplomb - in which he played dread-locked, heavily-tatted drug dealer Psycho Ed, a performance distinctly Joker-like in its flavor and intensity.
Brody's predilection towards physical transformation is redolent of Christian Bale: to play the lead in Predators, he put on 25lb of muscle, dropping his body fat to less than 6%. While The Joker is unlikely to require this level of reinvention - as I've said before, Brody, gaunt and sallow, seems naturally suited to the Ace of Knaves - it'd be good to know there's an actor on board whose willing to go all out in, for instance, trying to emulate Arnold Schwarzenegger's physique for an otherwise mostly forgettable actioner. Brody can manage the crazy eyes - he's even got the right chin - and, given that he's dropped off the map a bit the last few years, he might even be looking for career rebirth. If he can pull off the hysterical laugh, it might just help him get over the Oscar curse.If only Batman had been an option for F. Murray Abraham.