Joker: Gotham's NightmareThe Joker first appeared in the debut issue of Batman in 1940. He has been wreaking havoc throughout the universe of DC Comics ever since.
Updated September 24, 2021 7.6K votes 1.1K voters 43.7K views
Over 1.1K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of 17 Famous Actors Who Almost Played the Joker
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A list of notable people who were (somewhat) close to playing the Joker. Vote up the ones you would love to see play the role.
In every superhero movie, villains seem to have the most fun. And no villain has more fun that Batman’s arch nemesis the Joker. It’s an iconic role that seems to offer a blessing and a curse to everyone who touches it, but that hasn’t stopped a tidal wave of actors from campaigning to put themselves in the middle of a Joker-Batman sandwich. The actors who almost played the Joker are astounding, either by their sheer amount of talent, or just by how big they are in Hollywood, and some of the people who auditioned for the role will definitely surprise you. Take a break from working on your Heath Ledger impression to check out the actors who almost played the Joker.
In order to play the Joker from Batman, an actor has to fully lose themselves in the character, and bring something completely new to the role. Every Joker actor since Caesar Romero has brought something wholly unique to the character, and it ended up defining their career. And after all, who wouldn’t want to be a part of a lineage that included Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill, and Heath Ledger? Most of the actors who were in the running to play Joker are interesting in their own way, and it would be cool to know how they would have changed the history of the character.
Vote on the actors who you would have loved to see play this iconic role, and if you think there’s an actor that should be in consideration to play the Joker - tell us about it in the comments.
When Willem Defoe was cast in the 2017 Justice League movie, the Internet rumor mill was convinced this meant he was getting a second stab at the role his face was built to play. Then it was announced that Defoe would be playing Aquaman-ally Nuidis Vulko.
This was a second near-miss for Dafoe. From what we can tell, Defoe was briefly under consideration for the role of the Joker in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, but he lost out to one of the greatest actors on the planet so whatever.
Even though it seems like a no brainer to cast Tim Curry as an evil clown (he was pretty good at it that one time), it seems like he couldn't deliver what the producers of Batman: The Animated Series wanted. After he recorded four episodes it was decided that his voice was too scary, so the role went to Mark Hamill - who went on to have one of the greatest second acts in the history of Hollywood.
At one point, skeleton-lizard hybrid Tom Hiddleston was rumored to be in consideration to play a battle-wearied Joker in Zach Snyder's Batman V. Superman. We don't know how Hiddleston would have been able to convince the fine folks at Disney to let him play Loki in the MCU while also playing the Joker, but it would have been interesting to read about.
Robin Williams has a love-hate relationship with the Batman franchise, the Joker, and Warner Bros. in general. The trouble began when he was offered the part for 1985's Batman when Jack Nicholson balked at signing a contract. When Williams agreed to the play the character WB immediately told Nicholson about it, which led him to finally agree to play the part. Williams was pissed about being used as leverage and he didn't work with Warner Bros. again until they apologized for their iffy behavior.
First off, there's no way this was ever going to happen. The universe wouldn't have allowed something so wonderful to occur. This alleged casting would have occurred in Ivan Reitman's unrealized project The Batman, that would have also given us Bill Murray as Batman, and Eddie Murphy as Robin. Fine. Whatever.
Crispin Glover is one of America's greatest creative minds, but even he knew that the online chatter about his audition for the Joker in The Dark Knight was mostly hogwash. Even though he could have brought his magnificently dark energy to the role, at the time, Glover didn't have the star power of some of the other actors up for the part.
