All 13 Batman actors ranked from worst to best

6. David Mazouz

Appeared in: Gotham

The youngest actor on this list, David Mazouz portrayed an adolescent Bruce Wayne in Fox’s beautifully twisted Batman prequel Gotham. While previous live-action Batman offerings had given us a glimpse into Bruce’s childhood, this was the first time that we got such a detailed portrayal of it. That technically should have put Mazouz at a disadvantage because he didn’t have any previous live-action source material to go on, but it also gave him a chance to make an original contribution to the Batman mythos – something that he easily managed to accomplish.

Obviously, given the premise of the show, his performance was more about telling Bruce Wayne’s story than anything else and that paved the way for what may just be the best-developed version of the character to ever grace our screens.

Mazouz’s powerhouse performance in the pilot episode allowed viewers to see how Bruce reacted in the immediate aftermath of his parents’ death, and he built upon that throughout the rest of the series as the character’s last remaining shreds of innocence were slowly stripped away from him – leaving behind the mature warrior that helped save Gotham in the show’s final season.

Mazouz is often overlooked on lists like these, either because he played the role on television or the fact that he didn’t actually play Batman (an excuse that the Gotham series finale has since rendered useless), but the fact of the matter is that he never needed a mask because he embodied all of the traits associated with the character without it. In doing so, he showed us a side to Bruce that we had never seen before, while still managing to incorporate the charming personality and tortured psyche that we all know the character possesses.

The most unique interpretation of Bruce Wayne on this list but, thanks to Mazouz, one of the most powerful.