Joaquin Phoenix becomes the 2nd actor to win an Oscar for playing the Joker

Looking to win an Academy Award? Playing the Joker is becoming a pretty decent shot at one.

Joaquin Phoenix on Sunday took home the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Joker, becoming the second person to win an Oscar for portraying the Batman villain. The first, of course, was Heath Ledger, who in 2009 posthumously won Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.

Phoenix, who picks up the first Oscar of his career after four nominations, remained the frontrunner to win Best Actor throughout awards season, and he previously won at the Golden Globe Awards, the Critics' Choice Movie Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the British Academy Film Awards. In his SAG Awards acceptance speech, Phoenix paid tribute to Ledger, calling him his "favorite actor."

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When Joker scored 11 nominations at the 2020 Oscars, this set a new record for most Academy Awards nods for a comic book film. Appropriately enough, this came 11 years after outcry over The Dark Knight not being nominated for Best Picture became part of what inspired the Academy to expand the Best Picture line-up to more than five nominees.