20 Things You Didn't Know About Batman Forever
2. Steve Martin Was Offered The Riddler
The role of The Joker almost felt tailor-made for someone like Jim Carrey, so it's somewhat of a surprise that the studio actually struggled to cast it properly. Before the right light went off in the right head, they offered the role to comedian, actor, writer, poet and playwright Steve Martin. It's one of those "wouldn't-it-have-been-interesting" facts. It even made vague sense, given that Martin's previous work, The Man With Two Brains, had his character deal with mind control/swapping like The Riddler.
But at the time, Martin was going through a divorce from his wife actress Victoria Tennant (a better title for the film apparently would have been "Batman Divorced" given the number of relationships that fell apart surrounding production) and his friend John Candy had just died of a heart attack.
Neeedless to say, Martin wasn't up to the task.