Jack Nicholson At 80: His 10 Best Performances

The Joker is a role that Nicholson was simply born to play. He set the high benchmark for comic book movie supervillains, and showed you could be flamboyantly camp and insanely dark and sinister at the same time. It's clear Nicholson is having a blast and loving every minute of it.

With all due respect to the rest of the cast, Nicholson's Clown Prince of Crime steals the show in Tim Burton's lavish Neo-Gothic version of Batman. The freakishly playful grin, the scarily shocking make-up, the uncontrollable maniacal laugh and generally glorious insanity Nicholson displays succeeded in establishing a more brooding and believable Batman that we have all come to know and love, one which acted as the natural precursor to Christopher Nolan’s as yet unrivalled Dark Knight trilogy.

The uninspired plot itself is instantly forgettable: The Joker adds a toxic substance called "Smilex" into hygiene products which results in victims literally dying with laughter. But what we do remember is the memorable line to Michael Keaton's excellently understated Batman/Bruce Wayne of, "Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?," using his high-voltage joy buzzer to electrocute to death a fellow gangster, and finding out that Batman does indeed hit a man with glasses.