After the release of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker stood out as being one of the best not only in the Batman franchise but in movies in general, surpassing Jack Nicholson's previous incarnation in the role in Tim Burton's Batman and taking the psychopathic villain to the next level. In each scene he dominated the screen delivering a towering performance which would have gone down in history even had the actor not died shortly after. While technically Ledger was part way shooting Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus at the time he suffered a fatal overdose of a concoction of medication, many people, including his father Kim Ledger, believe that while the official cause of death was an accidental overdose of prescription medication, his dedication to the darker aspects of The Joker was so intense that ultimately it cost his life. As Ledger said himself of the process of getting into the character, I ended up in the realm of the psychopath - someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts. Perhaps putting himself in such a dark psychological place led to his overuse of prescription medication. Like this article? Let us know in the comments section below.
