Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

He hired actor Heath Ledger to portray a frightening villain whose chaotic life threatens audiences, and Chris Nolan, director of new Batman movie “The Dark Knight,” says he got exactly what he wanted. This film marks one of the final big-screen appearances for Oscar nominee Heath Ledger, who died in January because of an accidental drug overdose at 28, and his portrayal of the villainous Joker has wowed audiences in the early screenings.

“We both saw it exactly the same way,” Chris Nolan told in an interview on Sunday. “It had to be very frightening, very much a force of anarchy, someone completely devoted to chaos and the idea of ripping down the world around him for his own amusement.” At a Saturday showing in Los Angeles for reporters, cast and crew, there was an audible gasp of shock from some audience members when Ledger’s evil Joker first appears on screen during a tense bank heist in the opening sequence.

With his scraggly matted hair, chalky-white scarred face, smudged raccoon eyes and drunkenly-applied blood-red lipstick — all the more disturbing when worn with a neat shirt, tie and vest — Heath Ledger seemed to have tapped into his darkest, deepest demons, only to channel them back into a malevolent anti-hero. In the movie based on the “Batman” comics, the Joker orchestrates a series of murders, kidnappings and bombings in an attempt to bring Gotham City to its knees, and it’s up to Batman (Christian Bale) to stop him. Heath Ledger’s villain is a far cry from the campy Joker that Jack Nicholson portrayed back in 1989’s movie, “Batman.”