Heath Ledger's diary reveals extremes he took to play Joker

Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for his performance in “The Dark Knight” (2008).

The diary Heath Ledger kept during the production of Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed 2008 film “The Dark Knight” is the subject of a new clip from the documentary “Too Young to Die” making the rounds online.

In the brief scene, the actor’s father, Kim Ledger, pages through his son’s journal, which offers an interesting glimpse into the reference points the actor used to help create his indelible take on Batman’s greatest foe.

The diary, seen here for the first time in this video, actually feels more like a scrapbook. On the cover it says simply, “The Joker,” with a picture of an elephant and a young girl in a hat. While there certainly are pages of written text inside, there are also many pages of pasted images including a couple of Alex from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (with the caption “Got Milk?”), a few panels from Batman comics and, of course, lots of clowns.

The clip is from a German documentary, Ledger’s father speaks English and the dialogue is curiously overdubbed into French, but a translation provided by a YouTube user allows us to hear Kim Ledger’s words as he flips through the diary:

This is the Joker’s diary. In order to inhabit his character, he locked himself up in a hotel room for weeks. He would do that. He liked to dive into his characters, but this time he really took it up a notch.

The hospital scene is interesting because when he was a kid, his sister Kate liked to dress him up as a nurse. He was really funny like that. He also was in the movie. This is a make-up test which was done eight months before. Before the end of the shooting he wrote ‘bye bye’ on the back of the page. It was hard to see this.

             

The last words scrawled in his production diary for the movie are as haunting as they are tragic.

Ledger's father, Kim Ledger, said that it was difficult to look through his late son's diary.

But as his production diary reveals, Ledger was also deeply troubled by what he learned while preparing for the villainous role.

The last words scrawled in the journal are, "BYE BYE."

Ledger finished the diary before production wrapped up. Ledger’s death at age 28, months before the film’s release, didn’t dim the power of his performance — for many, Ledger’s twitchy, anarchic Joker remains the standard by which all other comic book villains are measured.

He was awarded a posthumous Oscar for “The Dark Knight,” which was accepted by Ledger’s father; his mother, Sally Bell; and his sister Kate Ledger. (Only one other actor ever has been posthumously honored with an Academy Award: Peter Finch for “Network” in 1977.)

Ledger also received a posthumous honor at the Golden Globes ceremony in 2009, a prize Nolan accepted on the actor’s behalf.

“With the extraordinary response to his work that we’ve seen all over the world, I, for one, start to be able to look a bit less at that gap in the future and a little bit more at the incredible place in the history of cinema that he built for himself with his talent and with his dedication to his artistry,” Nolan said in his speech.

On one page you can clearly see, “Why So Serious?” written at the bottom. Highlighted in pink is “HOSPITAL ROOM” and below it reads the Joker’s monologue from the hospital scene with Harvey Dent. “I don’t want there to be any hard feelings between us, Harvey. When you and Rachel were being adbucted, I was sitting in Gordon’s cage. I didn’t rig those charges.”