8 Little Known Ways Aaron Eckhart Made Nolan’s Two-Face Awesome

5. He Put The Ultimate Outcome From His Mind

Unless you're in a Mike Leigh film, odds are as an actor you're totally aware of where the story's heading because, well, you've read the script. When you're playing a character with such a polar-opposite end point known to the audience from his very introduction this is only amplified. In the pre-release hype for The Dark Knight, speculation was rife as to the size of a role Two-Face would play relative to Harvey Dent, with some even suspecting the transformation could be left for another film. Either way, it was always inevitable that, at some point in the franchise, his nice-guy exterior would be worn down. It's hard for a film-maker to frame this without dipping into some form of fore-shadowing and while the film certainly alludes to it ("you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain") Eckhart didn't in his performance. Stating in interviews that he put Harvey's ultimate fate to the back of his mind, it allowed the character to stand up by himself; he was interesting for more than just being the future-Two-Face. It sounds simple, but with such fan expectation it'd have been easy to play it up.