Every Joker Movie Performance EVER Ranked From Worst To Best

1. Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)

The iconic quality of Heath Ledger's Oscar-winning performance as The Joker cannot be overstated: not only did Ledger scoop a (sadly posthumous) Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but he entirely reinvented what the character meant to audiences.

Following so many heightened, cartoonish versions of The Joker in both live-action and animated form, Ledger was the first to truly drag the character kicking and screaming into something approaching the "real" world.

But more than that, he gave us a Joker steeped in just the right amount of ambiguity, his precise backstory unclear yet, between the scars, the grungy makeup and the various tics and quirks, it was clear the man had suffered much.

Ledger also captured the anarchic, unpredictable spirit of the character better than anyone else, categorically wrestling the movie away from Christian Bale's Batman despite ultimately having just a fraction of his screen time.

Topping this will require a monumental confluence of luck and timing, but honestly, the smartest way to compete with it is to not even try, or rather, try something totally different - hence the success of Phoenix's marvellous attempt.