The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [138]
Unlike the critics, I really admired Jude’s performance and, having often been mauled myself, I felt great sympathy for him – not that he needed it, as, like me, he has a very successful career despite the carping! I once complained to David Lean about the unfair treatment by the critics of a film I had just made and he said, ‘You have to go through the envy barriers, Michael. Once you are through the other side, they know they can’t harm you any more and the personal stuff just stops.’ I’m through that barrier now (I suspect age has something to do with it – go on long enough and everyone loves you), and Jude and Ken have gone on to even greater success. Jude’s acclaimed portrayal of Hamlet at the Donmar Warehouse in London’s West End in 2009 was, I thought, outstanding, as was Ken’s raved-about performance in Ivanov at the same venue the previous year, not to mention his BAFTA-winning performance of the Swedish cop Wallander in one of my favourite ever TV detective series.
After we had all picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off, I was pleased to know that my next film would be back to the world of the blockbuster. When we had finished Batman Begins, I’d asked Chris Nolan what the next one would be like. He’s famous for never giving anything away, so all he said was, ‘Darker . . . much darker.’ And how right he was . . . I thought the first film was brilliant, but The Dark Knight, which finished filming in 2007, is even better – in fact I think it is one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen.
When I read the script for the first time, however, I could see a problem. Jack Nicholson had been such a fantastic Joker in the earlier Tim Burton Batman movie that it was difficult to see how anyone could follow that performance, let alone top it. But when I called Chris to ask him who he wanted to take the role and he said he wanted Heath Ledger, I immediately stopped worrying. Quite what we would get I didn’t know – but I knew it would be something original.
We were back in the big airship hanger at Cardington and the Chicago set was still standing. The unit had been shooting since February and it was the end of April by the time I joined them – I could never get used to the schedules on these enormous pictures – and in fact I actually only shot on this movie for ten days out of eight months. But for me, one of those days was unforgettable: it was the first time I came face to face with Heath Ledger’s Joker.
The scene was a cocktail party in Batman’s flat and as the butler I was masterminding the event. The flat was enormous – it was actually the lobby of a grand Chicago hotel – and I was greeting guests as they came in from the elevator. Eventually a group of guests were going to arrive and with them would be the Joker who would terrorise the whole party. I’d never met Heath before, and I didn’t have any dialogue with him during the scene, but we chatted between shots quite casually, with me trying not to let him see how disturbing I found his make-up. Any worries I might have had about him competing with Jack Nicholson vanished the moment I saw his face: it was truly horrific – it almost looked as if he was rotting from the inside. Jack was a great Joker; Heath was not a joke at all – he was a nightmare. He went in a completely different direction and I knew from the moment I saw him that it would work. In contrast to his sinister appearance, he was completely charming and so relaxed about his work that I had no inkling of what would happen when those bloody lift doors opened . . . Alfred thinks he’s letting friends in, but instead the Joker has killed them all. I was standing there and suddenly Heath burst out at full throttle and took over