Joaquin Phoenix did Heath Ledger proud with his portrayal as Arthur Fleck or The Joker in Joker winning once again, accolades after accolades. Both portraying the Clown Prince of Crime, the Batman antithesis brilliantly played out signs of mental illness which, many claimed Heath delved into too deep that might have proven harmful for the actor’s psyche and sanity. An old interview of Tom Waits from 1979 shows that behind the inspiration behind the remorseless psychopath could have been singer Waits himself.
The interview from 1979 on the Australian talk show The Don Lane Show shows Waits exuding the same mannerism and voice as that of Heath’s which is guaranteed to make your hand stand in the edge.
Watch the video here:
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Unsurprisingly Wait’s music is characterized by lyrics focusing on the underside of society, delivered in his distinctive deep, gravelly voice. To make the connection between Waits and Heath even more concrete, Waits has a role in Ledger’s final film, Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus’.
As for Heath fully becoming the Joker himself, a role which won him a posthumous Oscar, Heath, in an interview in 2007 said,
"It's a combination of reading all the comic books I could that were relevant to the script and then just closing my eyes and meditating on it. I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices - it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath - someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts. He's just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown."