Joaquin Phoenix 'wasn't ready' to play Joker in The Dark Knight

Joaquin Phoenix has revealed he met with Christopher Nolan about playing the Joker in The Dark Knight but he didn't feel ready to take on the villain at the time.

The Oscar-winning actor, who played a version of the comic book villain in Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux, felt he wasn't the right fit for the part when Nolan was casting his 2008 Batman sequel, which ultimately starred Heath Ledger as the character.

"I remember I talked to Chris Nolan about The Dark Knight and that didn't happen for whatever reason," Phoenix said on the Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin podcast. "I wasn't ready then. That's one of those things where it's like, 'What is in me that's not doing this?' And it's not about me. There's something else. There's another person who is going to do something... I can't imagine what it would be if we didn't have Heath Ledger's performance in that film, right?"

Phoenix added that perhaps the feeling was mutual and Nolan decided he wasn't right for the Joker either.

"I don't know whether Christopher Nolan was coming to me saying, 'You're definitely the person.' I can't remember the context of how we met, but I know we met," he continued. "My feeling was I shouldn't do this, but maybe he also was like, 'He's not the guy.'"

The Dark Knight was released after the death of Ledger, who posthumously won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance.

Phoenix finally felt ready to play Arthur Fleck/Joker in Todd Phillips' 2019 film Joker, for which he won the Best Actor Academy Award. He reprised the role for this year's sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, which was critically panned and a box office disappointment.