Paul Dano plays The Riddler in the upcoming The Batman movie, and the actor has revealed he had trouble sleeping making the movie due to the intense nature of the character. Speaking to EW, Dano said it was hard to "come down from this character," and it impacted his sleep schedule.

　　"There's a sequence with Peter Sarsgaard's character [Gotham district attorney Gil Colson]. That was intense," Dano said. "There were some nights around that I probably didn't sleep as well as I would've wanted to just because it was a little hard to come down from this character. It takes a lot of energy to get there. And so you almost have to sustain it once you're there because going up and down is kind of hard."

　　The difficult shoot extended to Dano's costume as The Riddler. He pitched the idea of having the character covered in plastic wrap (so he wouldn't leave any DNA at crime scenes). Director Matt Reeves liked the idea, but the first attempts at the costume were literally painful for Dano.

　　"My head was just throbbing with heat. I went home that night, after the first full day in that, and I almost couldn't sleep because I was scared of what was happening to my head. It was like compressed from the sweat and the heat and the lack of oxygen. It was a crazy feeling," he said.

　　The costume department eventually made some changes to make the mask more breathable, thankfully.

　　Dano also spoke about what attracted him to the role in the first place, saying Reeves had an idea for a villain that was "more real" and "terrifying." The Riddler won't be a typical villain, however, it seems. What he might lack in screen time, he makes up for in terror, apparently.

　　"The Riddler is omnipresent, but almost as a ghost," Reeves said. "When I came up with the idea that the Riddler would be sending correspondence to Batman, [what] was captivating to me was if you're a character whose mode is to work as a symbol, be anonymous, to come out of the shadows, nobody is supposed to know who you are; your power comes from the fact that you're anonymous. Then suddenly someone starts to rob you of your anonymity, you start to lose a bit of your power and it starts to unsettle you."

　　He added: "The flip side of that is that by withholding the Riddler, he had more power, he was more unsettling. He felt like a ghost throughout the whole movie, this kind of presence that you never knew where he would show up and how he was affecting things. And that that mystery would put Batman in a very vulnerable position because he didn't understand from where and how and what the Riddler was acting."

　　The full EW interview is packed with interesting insight about The Batman, which opens March 4.

　　In addition to Dano as The Riddler, the movie features Robert Pattinson as Batman and Kravitz as Catwoman. It also features Andy Serkis as Alfred, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, and John Turturro as Carmine Falcone. The movie runs for nearly three hours.