Joaquin Phoenix Reveals ‘I Talked to Christopher Nolan’ About Playing the Joker in ‘The Dark Knight,’ but ‘I Wasn’t Ready Then’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Joaquin Phoenix revealed for the first time during a recent interview on “Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin” that he was approached to play the Joker by Christopher Nolan for 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” which famously starred Heath Ledger as the Crime Prince of Gotham.

Phoenix admitted that he just wasn’t ready to play the Batman villain when Nolan was developing “The Dark Knight.” “I remember I talked to Chris Nolan about ‘The Dark Knight’ and that didn’t happen for whatever reason,” Phoenix said. “I wasn’t ready then.

That’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘What is in me that’s not doing this?’ And it’s not about me. There’s something else.

There’s another person who is going to do something. … I can’t imagine what it would be if we didn’t have Heath Ledger’s performance in that film, right?” “I don’t know whether Christopher Nolan was coming to me saying, ‘You’re definitely the person.’ I can’t remember the context of how we met, but I know we met,” Phoenix added. “My feeling was I shouldn’t do this, but maybe he also was like, ‘He’s not the guy.'” Ledger’s critically acclaimed performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight” posthumously won him the Oscar for best supporting actor.