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Believe it or not, the Joker wasn’t always an A-list comic book villain. Inspired by Conrad Veidt’s character in the silent tragedy The Man Who Laughs, the Joker first plagued Gotham City in 1940’s Batman #1. According to behind-the-scenes legends, creators Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, and Bob Kane intended the Joker to die at the end of his first story, but they eventually realized what a special character they had on their hands and kept him alive.
Even then, the Joker was just one of Batman’s many nemeses and dropped from regular rotation after the 1960s TV show perhaps overexposed him. His hibernation ended though when Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams released “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” in Batman #251 in 1973. From that point on, the Joker laughed his way to the top of the Arkham Asylum bunch, his spot solidified when New Hollywood legend Jack Nicholson became the highest-paid actor ever (or at least up to that point) to play the part.
Since then, the Joker has been a mainstay in Batman adaptations and many great actors have taken the part. Longtime voice actors Larry Storch and Frank Welker brought the character to life in cartoons from the 1960s through the 1980s while Kevin Michael Richardson, Alan Tudyk, and even Brent Spiner put their own spin on the Joker for The Batman, Harley Quinn, and Young Justice, respectively. And we have Barry Keoghan lurking in Arkham Asylum of Matt Reeves’ The Batman. Compelling as all of these takes are, the seven actors below give the most prominent portrayals, even if they aren’t at all of the same quality.
7. Jared Leto – Suicide Squad / Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Given the general incompetence of movie studio execs, it’s easy to understand why fans would clamor for creatives such as Zack Snyder and David Ayer to have control over their movies. But these particular creatives don’t always make the best decision, as demonstrated by the fact that they cast Jared Leto as the Joker.
Even when playing “a regular dude,” Leto confuses more acting with good acting. So why in the world would anyone ask him to play the Joker in Suicide Squad, especially following up Heath Ledger‘s iconic take? Sure enough, Leto throws everything at the wall in the hope that something would shock viewers. Is a “twisted” tattoo on his forehead shocking? No? How about laying around a bunch of knives while audibly attempting to turn your laugh down to half-speed? Nothing? What if the Joker coos about hurting Harley Quinn?
Ledger’s Joker described himself as a dog just chasing cars, but that explanation better fits Leto’s unfocused take. That fact makes Snyder’s decision to bring back Leto for his restored cut of Justice League all the more galling. When he and Ben Affleck‘s Batman has his “Knightmare” face off with this clown, you can almost see Leto looking at the camera and asking, “Do you like me now?!?”
6. Joaquin Phoenix – Joker/Joker: Folie a Deux
Yes, I know that Joaquin Phoenix won a Best Actor Oscar for playing Arthur Fleck in Joker. And yes, I do think that Phoenix is one of the best actors of his generation. But here’s the thing: he’s terrible in both Joker movies. Director Todd Phillips abandons his responsibility to actually give direction to Phoenix, letting the actor do whatever he wanted. Thus we get an emaciated Phoenix playing Fleck, standing in his living room and contorting himself for no reason. We get him playing “crazy” through an endless series of tics and twitches, his intermittent bursts of laughter representing the most controlled part of his performance.
Contrast Phoenix’s Joker to his better performances as a troubled man, namely The Master. Even leaving aside the fact that The Master director Paul Thomas Anderson made Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, and Todd Phillips made The Hangover and Old School, the differences in Phoenix’s performances are remarkable. Anderson’s camera traces the tension on Phoenix’s face, but he also makes the actor keep his anger and tension internal.
There’s a confidence to Phoenix’s portrayal of a madman in The Master that’s missing from Joker, which plays like a cartoon version of a crazy person—something that would be appropriate for a comic book movie if only Joker wasn’t so intent on being a serious, big-boy movie for grown-ups who tell everyone that Maus won a Pulitzer.
5. Cesar Romero – Batman (1966 – 1969)
Given the absolute seriousness that Ledger and Phoenix brought to the Joker, it almost seems sacrilegious that Cesar Romero refused to shave his mustache when he joined the cast of the 1966 series. But Romero’s reluctance illustrates the way most people thought of the Joker at the time. He was just one of Batman’s villains, no more remarkable than the Penguin or the Riddler.
So Romero is the ultimate middle-of-road pick. He looks great, mustache and all, in his colorful costume and clown makeup, but no better than Burgess Meredith’s Penguin or any of the women who played Catwoman. He knows how to vamp and cackle, but no more so than any other bad guy actor.
Nothing demonstrates that better than the 1966 movie based on the show, in which the Joker is one of four bad guys, alongside Penguin, Lee Meriwether’s Catwoman, and Frank Gorshin as the Riddler. All four baddies are pitched at the same level of intensity, but the other three manage to steal certain scenes for themselves. Romero, however, just lingers in the background, giving a big laugh when he gets a close-up but never making viewers miss him when he’s not onscreen. Is that a bad thing? No, not really. Romero a serviceable bad guy, which is all Joker was in the 1960s.
4. Cameron Monaghan – Gotham
Gotham went into production as an adaptation of the great Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka series Gotham Central and came out something very different. Instead Gotham felt more like the 1960s series recreated for a post-Dark Knight era. In between detectives Gordon and Bullock interacting with baby Batman and Catwoman, they encounter Bat-baddies as silly as anything you’d find fighting Adam West and Burt Ward.
At its best, Gotham uses its prequel standing to have fun with the Batman status quo. Case in point: Cameron Monaghan as twin brothers Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska. From his first appearance in the season one episode, “The Blind Fortune Teller,” which introduced him as a circus performer who lets out a hideous cackle after confessing to his mother’s murder, Gotham teased him becoming the Clown Prince of Crime.
That teasing continues throughout the remaining four seasons. Initially, Gotham creator Bruno Heller intended for Jerome to be one of many “proto-Jokers” who may have inspired the actual guy. But as the series progressed, Jerome became more and more established as the Joker of the show. That is until his death at the end of season 4. But because Jerome sprayed acid on his straight-laced brother Jeremiah before dying, the character and questions lingered.
To his great credit, Monaghan played both brothers fully aware of the viewers’ expectations. Whether portraying Jerome or Jeremiah, Monaghan seemed to wink at his audience, knowing that they expected him to put on a purple suit and never doing it, which makes him a proper agent of chaos… exactly as the Joker should be.
3. Jack Nicholson – Batman (1989)
I was 11 years old when Batman came out and, I’ll admit, I hated Jack Nicholson’s performance back then. It just didn’t feel like the Joker to me, an opinion that solidified as I watched more Jack Nicholson films and just assumed he played the same character in every part.
I was a very dumb kid, is what I’m saying. Nicholson was the first actor to play the Joker with no real precedent outside of the comics, as the TV and cartoon versions were just generic baddies. Everyone else would be riffing on the version that preceded them, which makes Nicholson’s idea of Joker as performance artist even more impressive.
The Batman script by Sam Hamm by Warren Skaaren saddles the leads with standard ’80s action movie tropes, and director Tim Burton famously didn’t care about the character motivations (“I have no idea” Burton answered when Nicholson asked him why the Joker went up a tower at the movie’s end). Yet Nicholson makes his Joker feel like a comic book character come to life, a murderous artist who sees the world as a giant prank without ever having to articulate his worldview. All the world’s a stage, and Nicholson’s Joker is going to play to the cheap seats while knocking them dead. Literally.
Although Joel Schumacher wanted Nicholson to return as the Joker in a dream sequence for the shelved Batman Unchained, it’s better that he only had one outing. Nicholson’s Joker is one of a kind, unique in the annals of the character and in the actor’s filmography, no matter what young, dumb me thought.
2. Mark Hamill – Batman: The Animated Series
How great is Mark Hamill‘s take on the Joker? It’s so great that Joker, not the main character in a genre-defining blockbuster, is Hamill’s signature role. Where every other person to play the Joker has a particular interpretation—sadist or prankster or showman or monster, etc.—Hamill plays multiple notes, often at once. When he drops into a low growl, the Joker conveys genuine menace. Yet when he tosses off a corny one-liner and bows for an audience, Hamill makes the different tones all feel consistent.
Hamill, of course, wasn’t the first pick to voice Joker in Batman: The Animated Series. Tim Curry got the role first and voiced several episodes before Bruce Timm and Alan Burnett replaced him with Hamill, for reasons that have never been made clear. Whatever went into the decision, there’s no question that it was the right one. Thanks to his ability to adjust his voice to a variety of tones, Hamill’s Joker truly feels like he exists in his own world. There’s the grotesque nuclear family he establishes in Mask of the Phantasm (“Meatloaf again? Awww, I had it for lunch!”), the jolly holiday host in “Christmas With the Joker,” the suave businessman in “The Laughing Fish.” One almost gets the sense that he’s trying to be a regular person, but it always gets refracted into something upsetting and strange.
1. Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
Heath Ledger performs a magic trick in The Dark Knight. No, I’m not just referring to the way he makes a pencil disappear by burying it deep into the eye of a mob tough. I’m referring to the fact that he feels like a force of destructive nature, even though he visibly spills no blood on screen. And he does it as a proper Joker, completely with a showman’s flourish at the end.
It’s not just that Ledger’s Joker refuses to pick a single mode, veering between theatrical glory hound to old-school mob enforcer, to mental illness victim. It’s that Ledger plays each version with complete sincerity, as if he’s finally discovered his “true” self and all the rest are just masks he puts on. We viewers believe him when he says that he doesn’t have a plan (even though we’ve watched him execute meticulous plans); we also believe him when claps for the newly promoted Commissioner Gordon; and we believe him when he says he doesn’t want to kill Batman.
Part of that belief comes from the fact that it’s clear that Ledger’s Joker is having so much fun. There’s the delighted giggle he releases when his henchman gets zapped by Batman’s mask. There’s the shock Joker relates when the GC cop says that the he killed six of his pals. And yes, there’s the way he says “yeah” when the mobsters ask if he thinks he can just walk out.
Ledger is fun, frightening, and chaotic, completely redefining the character in a way that no one—in movies, TV, or comics—can get around.
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