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"Heath Ledger was originally approached by Christopher Nolan to play Bruce Wayne in his superhero reboot Batman Begins. Ledger, who won a posthumous Oscar for his turn as The Dark Knight villain Joker, initially told Nolan that he wasn&amp;#039;t interested in appearing in a comic book blockbuster. Christian Bale was eventually cast as Batman in 2003.   &amp;quot;He was quite gracious about it, but he said, &amp;#039;I would never take a part in a superhero film&amp;#039;,&amp;quot; The Playlist quotes Nolan as saying. &amp;quot;I explained to him what I wanted to do with Batman Begins and I think maybe he felt I achieved it.&amp;quot; Nolan added that he helped Ledger prepare for the role of the anarchic Joker by sending him books containing Francis Bacon paintings and Anthony Burgess&amp;#039;s novel A Clockwork Orange. &amp;quot;Heath spent months and months [preparing], we cast him even before the script was written so he had a very long time to obsess about it, think about what he was going to do, to really figure it out,&amp;quot; the director said.  Nolan also spoke about the unpredictability of Ledger&amp;#039;s performance, and how he developed the character&amp;#039;s unique voice from camera tests through to the actual production. &amp;quot;The voice was certainly scary because it would shift in pitch,&amp;quot; he recalled. &amp;quot;You never quite know which way the pitch is going to go with the voice. Just as the physical movements were [unpredictable], you didn&amp;#039;t know what he was going to do with his hands, the way he moved, it was always a surprise. &amp;quot;The actual tone of his voice was a surprise too. Sometimes threatening and sometimes more sing-song and light.&amp;quot; Watch Christopher Nolan&amp;#039;s The Dark Knight Rises interview with Digital Spy below:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/batman/news/a442002/heath-ledger-was-approached-by-christopher-nolan-to-play-batman/>