Harry and the Hendersons and 3rd Rock From the Sun star John Lithgow could have played The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, and still regrets turning the job down.
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Apparently, Lithgow didn’t realize that Batman was going to kick off a superhero craze that would not completely die down until…
…well, we’re still waiting.
“My worst audition was for Tim Burton for Batman,” Lithgow told Vulture (via Yahoo!) this weekend at the Tony Awards. “I have never told anyone this story, but I tried to persuade him I was not right for the part, and I succeeded. I didn’t realize it was such a big deal. About a week later I heard they were going after Robin Williams and Jack Nicholson.”
Lithgow had also been considered as a candidate for The Joker in Joe Dante’s Batman film that never happened, although the actor said he likely would have passed on that one as well, since at the time he was working on an exhausting and time-intensive Broadway play.
Of course, had Lithgow taken either of those jobs, it would have created an even more interesting Bat-family Venn diagram between Lithgow, his 3rd Rock co-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, (who appeared in The Dark Knight Rises and was basically Robin), and Levitt’s 10 Things I Hate About You co-star, Heath Ledger, who played The Joker in The Dark Knight.
Creative genius Tim Burton brings Gotham City to life with this critically acclaimed hit based on the famous comic book series.
Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) is leading a double life. He is a successful businessman by day and a crime fighting superhero by night. But buried in his past is a secret that comes back to haunt him when a man called The Joker (Jack Nicholson) begins terrorizing the city. Now Batman must find a way to stop this madman and protect his identity from a reporter (Kim Basinger) who he is attracted to, before he loses everything he fights to protect!
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