When Christian Bale Recalled His First Iconic Scene With Heath Ledger As Joker, How He Was Perfect AF & Said “The More Beat Him The More He Enjoys It”

Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger starrer The Dark Knight is considered one of the best Batman movies ever made. Bale, who starred as The Batman against Ledger’s gruesome The Joker, once spoke about his very first scene opposite Ledger.

Christian Bale’s first scene with Ledger in the 2008 blockbuster was when he interrogates The Joker. Read on to know what Bale felt in the room while working with Ledger.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter earlier about his first scene with Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Christian Bale shared, “Our first scene was in an interrogation room together, and I saw that he’s a helluva actor who’s completely committed to it and totally gets the tone that Chris [Nolan] is trying to create with this.” The actor added, “We’re not going for actors revealing their enjoyment of playing a wacky caricature. We’re treating this as serious drama. You go into character and you stay in the character. I love that. I find that so ridiculous that I love it, and I take that very seriously. Heath was definitely embracing that. When he was in the makeup and the garb he was in character the whole time; and when he took it off he was absolutely fantastic company to be around.”

Here’s that iconic scene:

Christian Bale further shared what made Ledger’s Joker so unnerving. “As you see in the movie, Batman starts beating the Joker and realises that this is not your ordinary foe. Because the more I beat him the more he enjoys it. The more I’m giving him satisfaction,” said Bale.

He continued, “Heath was behaving in a very similar fashion. He was kinda egging me on. I was saying, ‘You know what, I really don’t need to actually hit you. It’s going to look just as good if I don’t’. And he’s going, ‘Go on. Go on. Go on….’ He was slamming himself around, and there were tiled walls inside of that set which were cracked and dented from him hurling himself into them. His commitment was total.”

When asked whether Bale ever felt upstaged during his scene with Heath Ledger, the actor denied it saying, “No, not at all. Because it was exactly the point that I had a problem with in all of the other Batman movies.” Bale also added, “I’d never found him to be intriguing at all. Whereas these graphic novels depicted him as by far the most fascinating of them. I feel like we gained that back with Batman Begins-that he’s a character with substance.”

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