7 Little Known Tics That Defined Jared Leto's Joker Performance

1. The Animal Touches

While Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger's Jokers are inherently strange, they're both very much men. We see Nicholson's Joker's origin, making him the most human of all of the screen Jokers, while Ledger's provocative refusal to explain himself actually has a similar effect. He left a vacuum of explanation and fans filled it with speculation - most of which related to him being a broken man of some sort.

But Leto's Joker is more alien, more animal and markedly less explainable as a normal human. To that end, Leto makes his villain move like a snake, growling at times and even purring like a deranged cat. Everything from the removal of his eyebrows to his pseudo-sexual energy and aggression marks him out as belonging to the animal kingdom.

Even his "normal" speech patterns are more like snarls and barks, which is why he comes across as so weird. And it's that animal magnetism that helps feed into how inexplicably intoxicating he is to other characters.

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