Tuesday, 27 May 2008

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Christian Bale 'wanted to share' Dark Knight with Heath Ledger

Actor says Heath did one hell of a job

Christian Bale recalls co-star Heath Ledger's performance in Dark Knight

Dark Knight star Christian Bale recalls his costar Heath Ledger as "intense" and "anarchistic" on the set of the set of the late actor's last movie.

"He was incredibly intense in his performance, but incredibly mellow and laid-back. Certainly there was this great anarchistic streak to it – just getting dirtier than anybody's envisioned the Joker before," Bale, 34, tells Details magazine.

Ledger died on Jan. 22 of a prescription-drug overdose at the age of 28. And Bale laments that the film "was something I wanted to share with him – and expected to do so."

"And I can't do anything else but hope that it will be an absolutely appropriate celebration of his work," he says. In earlier interviews, Bale commended Ledger on doing "one hell of a job."

Bale adds that he almost never donned the Batsuit at all because of a deep-seated fear in closed spaces.

"[I was] just thinking, 'This isn't going to work. I'm claustrophobic, I can't breathe, I'm getting a headache already, and this is all going to go very badly,'" he says.

But once he overcame his claustrophobia, the actor says, he went on to cheerfully perform much more dangerous feats.

"I was standing on the corner of the Sears Tower, on the outside, 110 stories up. I felt quite oblivious to it ... not fully aware that the blades were actually just feet from my head," he says.

By Michael Y. Park