Despite his unfortunate family ties (*neigh*), Eric Roberts is easily one of the better actors gracing our screens at the moment. And, come July 18, he will most likely blow our socks off with his portrayal of Salvatore Maroni in The Dark Knight.

The elder brother to Julia Roberts (*neigh*) and dad of Nancy Drew‘s Emma Roberts, Eric Roberts has had over 150 screen roles, including Heroes, The L Word and Less Than Perfect on the small screen, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1985 for his role as the escaped convict Buck in the film Runaway Train.

For me, one of the big reasons why I am so in love with Christopher Nolan‘s revitalization of the Batman franchise is thanks to his reliance upon the comics as inspiration. Salvatore Maroni is one of these examples, a ruthless crime boss from Gotham city who was one of Batman’s first villains, and the man who is responsible for scarring Harvey Dent, and beginning his spiral into becoming the character Two-Face.

Roberts is reprising a character first played by Dennis Paladino in 1995’s “beginning of the end for Batman movies before Bale and Nolan got together” Batman Forever. Roberts stated that he was not going to be basing his performance on Paladino’s. “Not at all, because I’m not him,” Roberts told SciFiWire. “Why would I try to do that? I would hope he would give himself the same respect and work the other way around as well.”

The Dark Knight comes to screens in Australia on the 17^th of July, and in the U.S. and UK on the 18^th.