Barry Keoghan’s Joker Beats Out Leto, Ledger & Phoenix On Role-Prep Stat

Barry Keoghan breaks a Joker record after his brief The Batman appearance, surpassing previous DC actors like Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jared Leto. While Matt Reeves’ The Batman featured multiple antagonists throughout its 3-hour runtime, the Joker only made a brief appearance towards The Batman‘s ending, and he was obscured by shadows. However, The Batman‘s deleted scenes revealed what Barry Keoghan’s Joker looks like in this DC universe, his heavily scarred face and disheveled hair diverging from previous live-action iterations of the character on the big screen.

Although Barry Keoghan’s role in The Batman is short, his make-up process has been the longest for a Joker actor. Talking to GQ about his filmography, Keoghan reveals that it initially took six hours to apply his Joker makeup, and that the process was shortened to five hours. In a 2016 interview with THR, makeup artist John Caglione Jr. states that Heath Ledger’s Joker makeup application for The Dark Knight was cut from one hour to 30 minutes, and Suicide Squad makeup artist Alessandro Bertolazzi explains that Jared Leto’s makeup took three hours. According to Joker makeup artist Nicki Ledermann (via Business Insider), it only took 15 minutes for Joaquin Phoenix to be camera-ready.