Costars lead Oscar calls for Heath Ledger in Dark Knight

Los Angeles—We may be more than two weeks away from the July 18 release date of the new Batman movie The Dark Knight, but there is a lot of buzz about its chances of winning awards.

Most of it centres on Heath Ledger, who died in January of an accidental prescription drug overdose. Ledger plays the Joker in the movie and there is strong support in both the L.A. media and among his costars for him to be nominated despite it being rare for actors to get much recognition for bringing comic-book characters to the screen.

(The exceptions have been icons like Jack Nicholson, who won a Golden Globe nomination for playing the Joker in 1989’s Batman and Al Pacino who won an Oscar nomination for playing the villainous Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy.)

Maggie Gyllenhaal, who took over the role of Bruce Wayne’s confidante, Rachel Dawes from Batman Begins’ Katie Holmes, says, in an L.A. hotel room, that Ledger’s performance is indeed exceptional:

“I think what Heath does in the movie is extraordinary and rare for even the most talented actors. He is totally free in the movie and even though the scenes that we are in together are scary, I had a great time working with him. Anything I threw at him he would take it and then throw many amazing things back at me.”

Christopher Nolan agrees that Ledger’s performance is different. The film’s director says that he wasn’t surprised that Ledger was able to bring something unusual to the role. “I had always felt that he was bold in his choices,” Nolan says. “For instance, in Brokeback Mountain he risked closing himself to the audience with a character who was distant. But it worked. And I felt that when we were making this movie, every scene he was in was a surprise.”

The Dark Knight stars Christian Bale as Batman and Aaron Eckhart as the new district attorney, Harvey Dent, who teams up with Batman and police Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) to try to bring the Joker to justice. Eckhart says that although Ledger made surprising choices throughout the film, he never tried to steal scenes.

“I cherished my time with Heath,” Eckhart says. “I would just watch him doing these amazing things. At the same time he would always work with me to make the scene better. It was an honour to work with him.”

But will the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences consider honouring the actor when they look back at the year in film? Oldman says he can’t imagine they could forget about him.

“He will probably get an Oscar nomination,” Oldman says. “The academy doesn’t usually recognize this genre of film. They usually think ”˜this is just an action movie and we are the Academy’. But I think they will do it this time because there are times when an actor goes through the sound barrier and you have to recognize that no matter what genre it might be. This is very special work. I just wish he was here to talk about it.”

Check out the trailer to get a taste of what's to come.