joseph gordon levitt

Ever since his alien days on 3rd Rock From the Sun, Joseph-Gordon Levitt has taken on plenty of nerd-friendly characters. With this week's opening of The Dark Knight Rises, we're taking a look back at some of his most memorable geeky parts. From his early stardom on the small screen to his part in the final Batman installment, here are our favorite geek-approved roles from Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

• 3rd Rock From the Sun — As Tommy Solomon, Joseph played an alien who was disguised as an adolescent human. Despite being a teenager, though, he was actually the oldest, smartest alien in the group — a fact he regularly mentioned throughout the series.
• 10 Things I Hate About You — Joseph's role as Cameron channeled a classic story of a geek who gets the girl. As the new kid in school, he decided to capture the cool girl's attention by being her tutor. It works, and she falls for his nice-guy charm over the stereotypical hot jock's smarm.
• (500) Days of Summer — Joseph has two wonderfully nerdy scenes in this film: first, there's his sunshine-y, over-the-top musical number after sparks fly with Summer. The second moment? When his character Tom, a trained architect, totally geeks out and creates a giant skyline wall mural.
• Inception — From the plot to the cinematography, this buzzed-about sci-fi action movie had all the best geeky elements — they are mind hackers, after all. Joseph played Arthur, the partner who researched and plotted all the missions into the dream worlds.
• The Dark Knight Rises — This week, Joseph hits the big screen in the latest Batman movie. In the final installment of the classic comic-turned-film series, Joseph plays a young, idealistic Gotham City police officer.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt took the Comic-Con stage today for their sci-fi movie Looper, in which Gordon-Levitt plays a character in 2072 who makes a living as a hit man, killing people who are sent back from the future (where it's much tougher to kill people, apparently). He comes up against a problem when his next victim shows up, and it's himself, 30 years later, played by Bruce Willis. The character is tough to kill, but for Gordon-Levitt, the challenge was sounding and looking like Willis (who was shooting a film and couldn't make it to Comic-Con). Find out what Gordon had to say about that, and more details about the film below.

• The director is Rian Johnson, who's a longtime friend of Gordon-Levitt's after they worked together on the 2005 movie Brick. Gordon-Levitt revealed that Johnson had written the character specifically for him — the first time that's happened for him.
• We saw a bit of footage from the movie beyond what's in the trailer, and Gordon-Levitt's voice sounds completely different because he's trying to mimic Willis. But he clarified that he's not impersonating Willis, but rather "tried to internalize him." He said that he watched all of Willis's films and then took audio from his movies and put it on his iPod to listen to. Gordon-Levitt expressed a lot of admiration for Willis, and said that he learned the most from hanging out with the actor, calling him a sweetheart and declaring what a fan of Willis's he's always been.
• If Gordon-Levitt looks a little different in the movie, then it's because he's wearing prosthetics to look more like Willis. Johnson said that after they cast Willis, he realized, "Uh-oh, they don't look anything alike," so they chose "a couple of key features; a little bit to the nose, a little bit to the lips." He thinks that Gordon-Levitt isn't just doing his best Willis imitation, but rather he's "really giving a performance."
• Blunt was cagey about what exactly her role was, but in the footage, she seemed to be a love interest of Joe's (Gordon-Levitt's character). She did say that she and her family get "embroiled in this mess when Joe is a p*ssy" and lets Bruce go." The cheeky actress added that she thinks Looper is "the best movie I've been apart of."

Costars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt were joined by their Looper director, Rian Johnson, to talk about their new sci-fi flick at a press conference before their panel at Comic-Con. If you've seen the Looper trailer, then you know the mind-bending flick stars JGL as a younger version of Bruce Willis, who's sent back in time to be assassinated by himself. At the press conference, Gordon-Levitt talked about how exciting it was to share a character with Willis and how the prosthetics for the film even fooled his own mother. Here are highlights:

On the biggest challenge of playing a young Bruce Willis:
Joseph Gordon Levitt: "The thing I focused on most was his voice. The voice is what I look for, first and foremost, with just about every character I play. Bruce was really open and collaborative; he recored himself reading some of my voiceover lines which I thought was really cool. But mostly it was just hanging out with him, getting to know him, having dinner."

On whether or not the screenplay is a confusing read:
Emily Blunt: "I read about 30 pages of the script and I was already like, 'Get me in this movie!' because I loved it so much. It's so rich in complexity, and conceptually it's so exciting, but also emotionally it is too. I needed a few reads of it for sure."

On being attracted to the role:
EB: "I think it's the same for a lot of actresses, that you look for female roles that aren't objectified. I think it's harder to find that in these more sci-fi movies. And this character had such a singular voice, and she had a really rich past to delve into. She was a really tough cookie, a tough nut to crack. I enjoyed the nuances."

On action movies:
JGL: "I have a pretty eclectic taste in movies I like to watch and movies I'm inspired to work on. I don't think action for action's sake is so fun, but when it helps tell the story, I love doing a good fight scene."

On the first time Willis saw Gordon-Levitt wearing prosthetics to look like him:
JGL: "That's one of the highlights of the whole thing, was Bruce seeing me for the first time and tripping out a little bit. Because he's a sweetheart, but he's hard to rattle. So to get any reaction out of him his pretty exciting. There was one point when we were shooting one of our scenes together and really quietly he said, 'You sound like me.'"

On Gordon-Levitt fooling his mother with his prosthetics:
JGL: "My mom said, 'When you stand next to me and I don't look at you, you're like yourself, who I know. But when I look at you, you're not my son anymore.'"

Photo courtesy of Sony

The first trailer for Premium Rush showcases a lot of fancy chase sequences for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's bike messenger character Wilee, but this new preview gives us a look at new scenes, including Wilee's encounter with the resident baddie, played by Boardwalk Empire's creepy Michael Shannon, who threatens the two-wheeled hero, "You have no idea what's coming for you."

This flick has all the elements of a great summer movie: JGL, cool map graphics (OK, that one's a little nerdy), and chase scenes galore. Clearly JGL is no ordinary biker, and by the end of the trailer, he's got a chip on his shoulder, voicing, "One time or another we all get hit; sometimes we gotta hit back." I know it's cheesy, but it just sounds good coming from him. I'm still wondering what's in the package and who exactly is chasing after Wilee, but does it really matter? The film comes out on Aug. 24, but you can watch the trailer for Premium Rush after the jump.