10 Iconic Actors Who Almost Played Batman Villians

Not only is Batman the coolest superhero of all time – which has been scientifically proven – he also has one of the best villain lineups too. Each bad guy represents a flip side of The Dark Knight; he’s about order and Joker is about chaos, Two-Face is about the duality of good and evil fighting with each other and Calendar Man...something about the importance of being on time?

These are juicy parts for any actor, so it’s no surprise icons like Jack Nicholson, Liam Neeson, Danny De Vito and Arnold Schwarzenegger has been drawn to them; even if it didn’t work out so well in the last example. Over the years other legendary actors have circled villain roles throughout various Batman projects, only for things to fall apart for one reason or another.

This is for the best in some cases, but for others, it’s tantalising to imagine what that particular actor could have done with the role. We can only dream, though, unless we travel into an alternate dimension to see how it turned out.

Batman: TAS reinvented the character of Mr Freeze, giving him a heartbreaking backstory that still produces manly tears to this day (*sniff*). When Freeze was selected to be the villain of Batman & Robin it only made sense for the studio to reuse this acclaimed story.

Mr Freeze in the animated series is a repressed, almost robotic figure, so initially the production was looking at Patrick Stewart to play the character. This makes sense; he’s totally bald, he’s an awesome actor and he’d bring a real sense of gravitas to the movie. Of course, the movie was essentially designed to be a feature length toy ad, so the studio was ultimately looking for a star name to front it.

They leaned towards Arnold Schwarzenegger instead and greatly increased the amount of ice-based puns. It’s hard to imagine a classy thespian like Stewart fitting into the neon nightmare of Batman & Robin, so it’s probably a bullet dodged for all concerned.