The Dark Knight Actor Opens Up On Working With Heath Ledger

It’s ten years to the day since The Dark Knight changed the face of comic book movies forever with its dark, twisting crime saga, and still, the film’s legacy lives on.

And so, in honor of Christopher Nolan’s landmark achievement, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Michael Jai White to discuss Batman, Gambol’s death, and his time spent with the late Heath Ledger, who so tragically passed away six months before the sequel’s opening.

The gifted actor died January 22nd, 2008 at the age of 28. Subsequent reports revealed the cause of death to be an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, and while Ledger’s sudden passing sparked rumors that his method acting left him in a fragile state of mind, White essentially rubbished those accusations while speaking with THR.

It has always upset me that he was put in this category of being a drug-addled, irresponsible type of actor. That gets me aggravated.

He continued:

It upsets me that Heath gets put in a category, like he was a method actor who inhabited this darkness that consumed him because people write that story in their head. And that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Heath was playful. When the director would say ‘cut,’ he would go back to this easygoing, very affable type of guy. Even when there was a day player or people in shorter roles, naturally they tend to give him his privacy and space, but Heath would be on the one initiating the conversation. He was that type of guy.

Those hoping to catch The Dark Knight on the big screen once more can look forward to Warner’s one-night-only IMAX screening on August 24th, when the DC epic will be rolled out across four locations: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Toronto.