Joker Origin Movie: We’re Crazy About These Actors Playing the Joker

Joaquin Phoenix or Daniel Day Lewis

Three-time Academy Award nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix (Gladiator, Walk the Line, The Master) and three-time Academy Award winner Daniel Day Lewis (My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood, Lincoln) are rarities in that they've never jumped into a cinematic superhero franchise.

Phoenix was said to be in contention to star as Doctor Strange for Marvel Studios, with reports saying Phoenix either didn't want to be tied to a franchise role or couldn't see himself fitting into the superhero blockbuster, comic-con culture of the Marvel Studios universe and press machine.

Daniel Day Lewis, meanwhile, announced his retirement in 2017, making it even more unlikely that the highly regarded actor would ever commit to a superhero movie.

Still, fans can dream: the pair of acclaimed and versatile actors have experience playing menacing, villainous, or mentally unhinged characters (sometimes all three) and a role as a failed comedian-turned-insane-criminal — if the movie keeps to one of the origins suggested in seminal Batman and Joker work The Killing Joke — would be a role that either actor could sink their teeth into and conjure up something intense, scary, and fascinating.

Phoenix made for a convincing nutcase in his I'm Still Here era, and was a menacing villain as Gladiator's Commodus; and Daniel Day Lewis, famous method actor that he is, was a convincing madman in There Will Be Blood, and was an effective crime boss in Gangs of New York — where he was directed by Scorsese.

Topping Heath Ledger's untouchable performance as the chaotic clown in The Dark Knight will be hard for any actor, but these two are capable of coming close.

Edward Norton

Edward Norton tried his hand at the comic book genre with 2008's The Incredible Hulk, with control issues essentially leading to his removal from both The Avengers and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, where he was replaced by Mark Ruffalo as the titular not-so-jolly green giant.

Still, Norton's name often pops up for fan casts — usually as another Bat-foe, the Riddler — in part due to Norton's history of playing characters who are complex and/or twisted, his most famous work likely David Fincher's Fight Club, where he played an unreliable narrator whose grip on reality slowly unraveled over the course of his adventures with an anarchic soap maker, Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden.

Norton earned two Academy Award nominations for his work in Primal Fear and American History X, where he portrayed violent sociopath Aaron Stampler and violent psychopath (and ex-neo-Nazi) Derek Vinyard, respectively.

Both are chilling takes on men who had that one bad day that drove them to lunacy, and Norton's body of works is proof enough he has what it takes to deliver the next truly unhinged take on the man who laughs.

Paul Dano

"And as long as I have teeth, I will bite you…" Remember that scene from There Will Be Blood? The one where healing preacher Eli Sunday was at one moment soft-voiced and creepy, before becoming loud and creepier?

Dano's Eli Sunday used his "healing powers" to force the arthritis out of an elderly member of his congregation, and the scene is a good indicator he'd do a fine job tackling a meek comedian in over his head who eventually gives into madness, becoming an unrestrained force of unpredictable insanity.

Dano also had a cruel and vicious turn in 12 Years a Slave, where his unsettling and malicious character gives you the creeps — a nice mixture with Dano's disarming, boyish looks. No offense to Dano, but that visage mixed with disfiguring chemicals would make one hell of a nightmarish bad guy…

Christian Bale

Christian Bale's time as a superhero is done. What about a turn as a super villain? Bale played Bruce Wayne / Batman in Christopher Nolan's acclaimed Dark Knight trilogy, where he squared off against his arch foe in Heath Ledger's Joker.

Before he was a selfless hero out to protect his beloved Gotham City, Bale took on a villainous role in Shaft as spoiled rich-boy Walter Wade, Jr., a character who could fly off the handle at the flip of a switch, or make himself an imposing presence when he's accosted in a jail cell for his shoes.

The most convincing case for Bale as the Joker is his defining role in American Psycho, where Bale portrayed serial murderer Patrick Bateman, who wields everything from an axe to a chainsaw during his trips of deranged psychopathy. He is, as the title and his actions lay out, insane —he's a user, a manipulator, and maybe even unsure of what's reality and what's fiction.

You know the saying. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.