Heath Ledger's appearance as the Joker in The Dark Knight remains one of the most influential performances in cinema history. However, the role was actually offered to two actors before he got the script.
Christopher Nolan's longtime casting director John Papsidera shared the insight at the Nashville Film Festival. According to TV Intelligentsia, Nolan first sent the script to Leonardo DiCaprio before sending it on to Joaquin Phoenix. The former went on to star in Inception with the director while the latter famously played the role in Todd Phillips' Joker movies. It was only after both passed that they spoke to Ledger.
Papsidera gave a bit more context from this process in a separate interview with Collider, although he didn't name names. However, this insight reveals that DiCaprio never even responded to the script.
"There was three actors really that we talked about, Heath being the third," he told the publication at the festival. "There was certainly more actors, but we discussed it in specific terms with two actors. The first one we never heard back from. The second one came in and told us why he didn't want to do the movie, because he didn't want to do big movies. And the third one was Heath."
He went on to describe how they knew that Ledger was perfect for the part. "Heath talked about how he saw the role as an anarchist in that all he wanted to do was tear everything down and that's exactly how Chris saw it and wanted it portrayed," Papsidera explained.
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