Arthur Fleck is a professional clown and aspiring stand-up comedian who lives with his mother, Penny, in crime-ridden Gotham City during the early 1980s recession. He suffers from a neurological disorder that causes hi… See more

• Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck / The Joker: A mentally ill, impoverished party clown and stand-up comedian disregarded by society, whose history of abuse causes him to become a nihilistic criminal with a clown-inspi… See more

Between 2014 and 2015, Joaquin Phoenix expressed interest to his agent in acting in a low-budget "character study" type of film about a comic book villain, like DC Comics character the Joker. Phoenix had thought of the idea 1 t… See more

Gotham City in Joker was set in 1980s New York City, according to Todd Phillips, "to separate it, quite frankly, from the DC universe". Mark Friedberg, the production designer of this film, said he established the filming loca… See more