Seven actors have played the Joker in live-action film and major television production: Cesar Romero (1966), Jack Nicholson (1989), Heath Ledger (2008), Cameron Monaghan (Gotham TV, 2014–2019), Jared Leto (2016, 2021), Joaquin Phoenix (2019, 2024), and Barry Keoghan (2022). Heath Ledger's Dark Knight Joker is most frequently ranked the greatest. Joaquin Phoenix and Heath Ledger are the only Joker actors to win Academy Awards for the role.
The full lineage of cinematic Jokers
The Joker is one of the most-adapted villains in comic-book cinema. Since the character's 1940 debut in Batman #1, Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson's anarchic counterpart to Bruce Wayne has been reinvented by every era's biggest stars. Each cinematic Joker reflects the cultural anxieties of his moment — Romero's harmless trickster during the 1960s pop-art television boom, Nicholson's mob-style gangster during the Reagan-era crime panic, Ledger's terrorist anarchist during the post-9/11 War on Terror, Phoenix's incel-character-study during the 2010s mental-health discourse.
Below, we rank all seven major live-action Jokers by performance, cultural impact, lasting influence, and faithfulness to the character's comic-book complexity. Voice-only performances (most notably Mark Hamill in Batman: The Animated Series and The Killing Joke) and brief LEGO-style cameos are excluded.
The ranking
Heath Ledger's anarchist Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is the performance that permanently reshaped the comic-book-villain template. Ledger reportedly isolated himself in a London hotel room for a month, kept a Joker journal of his thoughts, and developed the character's lip-licking tic, voice register, and physical mannerisms from scratch. He won the posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor — only the second posthumous Oscar in the acting categories. His scenes opposite Christian Bale's Batman gave the genre its definitive thematic statement on chaos versus order. Read our full Dark Knight coverage for the complete plot, cast, and trivia breakdown.
Todd Phillips's Joker reframed the character as a serious character study rather than a comic-book villain. Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a failing Gotham comedian whose social-rejection trauma and untreated mental illness gradually push him toward violent celebrity. The film won Phoenix the Academy Award for Best Actor and grossed over $1 billion globally — the first R-rated film to cross that mark. The 2024 sequel Folie à Deux reunited Phoenix with Lady Gaga's Harley Quinn in a musical-courtroom format that divided audiences. Both films exist in their own continuity, separate from Pattinson's Batman and Gunn's DCU. Our complete Joker (2019) and Folie à Deux coverage walks through both films in full detail.
Tim Burton's 1989 Batman gave Nicholson the role he'd been chasing for years. Nicholson reportedly negotiated one of the most lucrative contracts in Hollywood history, taking points on box office and merchandise that earned him an estimated $50–90 million from the film. His Joker is a gangster-glam reinvention of the character — Jack Napier, a Gotham mob lieutenant chemically transformed into the Joker by Batman himself. Nicholson's manic, vaudeville-tinged performance defined Joker for an entire generation before Heath Ledger reset expectations. Read our full Batman (1989) plot and cast breakdown for the complete Burton-era story.
Cameron Monaghan's dual performance as twin brothers Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska on Fox's Gotham is the most-developed Joker arc ever produced in any medium. Across five seasons, Monaghan played both an anarchic prototype-Joker (Jerome) and a calculated mastermind successor (Jeremiah) who together formed a kind of split-personality origin story. While technically not named Joker on screen for legal-licensing reasons, the character's trajectory, laugh, scars, and final-form appearance left no doubt about the role he was being positioned to inherit. Monaghan's performance is the rare television Joker that critics consistently rank alongside the major film performances.
The original cinematic Joker. Cesar Romero played the character throughout the 1966 ABC television series and in its theatrical feature spin-off. Romero famously refused to shave his mustache for the role; the white-greasepaint Joker makeup was applied directly over the visible facial hair throughout his entire run. His Joker was a pun-slinging trickster aligned with the broader pop-art register of the show — heist-of-the-week schemes, elaborate death-traps, the Bat-Shark-Repellent gag. Without Romero's Joker, the modern cinematic Joker trajectory has no zero point.
David Ayer's 2016 Suicide Squad introduced Leto's tattooed, gangster-glam Joker as Harley Quinn's manipulative-abusive boyfriend rather than a Batman-rival villain. Leto's method-acting commitment — sending the cast condoms, dead animals, and creepy gifts — became more widely-discussed than the performance itself. Most of his footage was reportedly cut from the theatrical release. He returned in Zack Snyder's 2021 director's cut of Justice League for the Knightmare-future epilogue, where his quieter, longer-haired reinterpretation of the character drew substantially more positive reception. Our coverage of Suicide Squad and Zack Snyder's Justice League walks through both appearances.
Barry Keoghan's brief appearance as an unnamed Arkham inmate in the deleted-scene-restored finale of The Batman (2022) is the only Joker scene in Matt Reeves's separate continuity to date. Director Matt Reeves has publicly confirmed Keoghan will return for The Batman Part II, where the character's full physical design, voice, and narrative role are expected to be developed. Keoghan's contemporary Oscar-nominated work in Banshees of Inisherin and Saltburn has positioned him as one of the most-anticipated future Jokers in development. Our full The Batman (2022) coverage includes the complete deleted-scene context.
The Mark Hamill question
Mark Hamill's voice performance as the Joker across Batman: The Animated Series (1992–1995), The Killing Joke (2016), countless Batman video games (including the Arkham series), and a brief live-action appearance in The Flash (2023) is consistently ranked by long-time fans as the definitive Joker voice. Hamill is the only actor to play the role across animation, audiobook, video game, and live-action archival appearance — but because this list ranks lead live-action theatrical performances, his voice work is acknowledged here rather than ranked within the main list. For most readers who grew up with the Animated Series, Hamill's laugh is the Joker's laugh.
What's next for cinematic Joker?
Barry Keoghan is expected to return for The Batman Part II, with Matt Reeves directing. Joaquin Phoenix has confirmed no third Joker film is currently in development following Folie à Deux's mixed reception. James Gunn's new DC Universe will eventually require a mainline Joker, with casting and creative direction yet to be officially announced as of May 2026. The character's adaptable nature — half-trickster, half-tragedy, fully unstable — guarantees no shortage of future reinterpretations.
Related guides
- Every Batman Actor Ranked — every Bruce Wayne who has fought a Joker on screen, from Adam West through Robert Pattinson.
- Joker Character Profile — comprehensive deep dive into the character's comic-book origins, animated voice work, and complete filmography.
- Batman Character Profile — the hero against whom every Joker is measured.
- MCU Watch Order — for readers more interested in Marvel's villain lineup.
- Top 25 Comic Book Films — the highest-rated entries across the entire comic-book cinema catalog, including The Dark Knight at #1.