He touched teen hearts with 10 Things I Hate About You, then grabbed everyone else with The Patriot. Now Heath Ledger is starring in a rockin' medieval adventure, Brian Helgeland's A Knight's Tale, and has already shot Elizabeth director Shekhar Kapur's Four Feathers. Here Ledger explains how he keeps his sanity in the mounting storm of stardom, provides a plausible theory on why Aussies are stealing the best parts in Hollywood films, and praises the new star in his life, Heather Graham.
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At the moment Heath Ledger isn't a prince of the red carpet. But those in the know in Hollywood have high hopes for the boyish-looking 22-year-old Australian actor with only two major US film credits under his belt. Teens kickstarted Hollywood's Heathwave in 1999 when they caught him as the brooding high school tough guy who spanks Julia Stiles into good behavior in 10 Things I Hate About You. A year later, Ledger drew interest from a broader audience when he starred as Mel Gibson's stubborn son in The Patriot. But even before The Patriot was released, word about the film had given Hollywood a good case of Heathitis, which caused writer/director Brian Helgeland (Payback) to meet with Ledger for his rollicking medieval adventure A Knight's Tale, a go-figure mix of action, bawdy humor, romance and heartfelt emotion held together by a brashly anachronistic thread of rock songs like Queen's "We Will Rock You" and David Bowie's "Golden Years." Ledger walked away with the lead role of the squire who disguises himself as a knight so he can compete in jousting matches. Now the film is generating sensational buzz, and Sony is releasing it in Hollywood's most competitive season, early summer. Should A Knights Tale fail to put Ledger on top, his fall film, Shekhar Kapur's Four Feathers, stands a good chance of doing the trick. In the remake of the 1939 war epic, he costars with Wes Bentley and Kate Hudson as a British officer determined to prove his courage during the uprising of the Sudan.
Ledger's personal life puts a celebrity gloss on his growing fame. While filming A Knight's Tale last year in Prague, he met and fell in love with an actress nine years his senior, Heather Graham, who was there shooting the Jack the Ripper thriller From Hell with Johnny Depp. Since then the two have been paparazzied everywhere, and have been the subject of many a gossip column.
While fame may be relatively new to Ledger, acting isn't. He landed his first professional gig at age 10 in a local stage production of Peter Pan. In high school he was the president of the drama club, but no theater nerd was he--Ledger was also the school's field hockey star. Upon graduating at age 16, he moved from his hometown of Perth to Sydney to pursue his acting career. Various jobs, including a starring role opposite Keri Russell on the TV series "Roar," elevated him to teen-idol status. That gave him the courage to try his luck in America. Within months he was cast in the gangster thriller Two Hands, which required him to fly back to Australia, where the film was shot. After that he got his big break in 10 Things I Hate About You.
When I meet Ledger in the coffee shop of L.A.'s trendy hotel The Standard, he's clad in oversized sunglasses, surfer-style beaded jewelry and a big fleece jacket. He's 100 percent L.A. groovy. But it's not only his attire that grabs attention--his mere physical presence is something to behold. At six feet four inches, with broad shoulders and a wildass mop of fashionably tangled bedhead, Ledger commands the room. Women stare, not knowing for sure who he is but knowing for sure he's someone. Though Ledger may look like a Hollywood scenester, he is not the least bit pretentious.
STEPHEN REBELLO: With so much happening to you in the past year, do you ever wake up and wonder how you got to such a place?
HEATH LEDGER: [Laughing] No, I very rarely wake up and think about anything beyond, "I'm hungry." It would be a lie to say I sit around and think about any of this stuff. My family gets all juiced up by it, though. They're living a different life through my eyes, a life that's probably more exciting for them than it is for me.
Q: You've been quoted saying that you'll drop out of the business if it stops being fun.
A: Yes, and I'm totally having fun. I love what I do, but it wouldn't be hard for me to walk away if I didn't.
Q: The Patriot gave you a tremendous amount of buzz in Hollywood. Did you figure that it would when you signed on?
A: Making that film came out of left field. Before it, I had a year and a half of sitting on my ass doing nothing. Without that movie, you wouldn't be here talking to me.
Q: What did you learn from Mel Gibson while working with him on The Patriot?
A: He knows how to run a business and to run himself as a business. He's also incredibly detached from it all and focused on his life and his family. Mel is like a gigantic king sitting up on his throne laughing and enjoying his banquet but at the same time running his city. It was really cool to have the first movie star I worked with be someone like Mel, as opposed to an asshole.
Q: Why did you take a year and a half off from acting before making The Patriot?
A: I was waiting for the right thing, determined that it would come. If it didn't, I was fully prepared to go home. I was that stubborn about it. "They" wanted to throw all sorts of opportunities in the world at me. That's their job. At the end of the day, it's what you make of the opportunities, which ones you pick that define you.
Q: But during that year and a half, didn't you almost get the role Jason Behr eventually won on "Roswell"?
A: I wasn't as close as you think. Yes, it was one of the things that I went for. I had been in New York for four months and had no money. Absolutely nothing. There were a lot of hard decisions during that year and a half where I was like, "Oh, God, should I take this part?" Then you talk yourself into it thinking it's a good idea. I figured I could do the series and get out in five years.
Q: What did you learn about yourself during that jobless phase?
A: I studied myself constantly, asking myself why I did things, why I was thinking and feeling things. I like to really get in there and read myself like a book. It helps me understand my craft. That year was a wonderful period where I got to relax with the world. It solidified for me the importance of standing by what I believe.
Q: Which is?
A: I'm only in this because I enjoy it. In terms of this industry, I can't run out and take just anything that might make me happy only for the moment. That's such a contrast to my character because I live every day by the second, not by the minute, hour or day. I don't have a diary or a schedule. I never have. I don't even carry cash. Can I borrow a dollar to pay the valet later?
Q: Sure.
A: Thanks, man.
Q: Your upcoming film, A Knight's Tale, is packed with action scenes, which must have been a physical strain. Were there ever times on the shoot when you were thinking, "What have I gotten into"?
A: No. Making that was fun. Everybody in that cast loved each other. I just saw it for the first time the other day and it is fucking fantastic. Oh, man, you haven't seen anything like this thing. I don't usually like to sound like a movie whore, to put myself out there and promote it, but it's really, really great. It's really funny and the jousting shit is astounding. The music, the cast--I'm just really happy with the way it turned out. I knew it was going to be good; I didn't expect it to be this good. I've finally made a movie my little sister can enjoy.
Q: Watch out. That could turn up as a review in an ad for the movie. A: [Laughing] I feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger right now. [Doing an Arnold accent] "Go and see my movie!"
Q: As the real star of the movie, what do you now know about having to, as they say, drive the bus, the way a Mel or a Tom does?
A: You can't drive it without a good supporting cast. Even if you're the lead in a movie, it's ensemble work. It's so not about you.
Q: Did you know a lot about Brian Helgeland's work before shooting the movie?
A: I saw his cut of Payback and really liked it. I didn't realize how talented he was. He's an amazing writer. I was blind to the mastery he smuggled into this movie, a rich heartbeat to the whole film.
Q: What made you want to pick up the role Jude Law almost took in Four Feathers?
A: It's a lead role. We've already shot for three months in Morocco, and it was tough, tough, tough, man. It was 18 hours a day, six days a week. It kept me on my toes. We've done the guts of the movie--the "beard" sequences [Laughing]--and now we've got another three months to do in London. Gluing on those beards was a nightmare.
Q: This film stars a who's who of upcoming actors. Who did you click with?
A: The collaboration of filmmakers on this movie is outstanding. Shekhar Kapur, the director, and Robert Richardson, the director of photography, are awesome. My costar Djimon [Hounsou] is a beautiful, beautiful guy. I love him. We're really good friends and he's such a wonderful actor. We clicked like brothers. We are brothers. I haven't done as much work with Wes Bentley or with Kate Hudson yet.
Q: Cate Blanchett said she felt like she was in experienced hands with Kapur when he directed her in Elizabeth. What's your take on him?
A: He's very deliberate. He sat us down every day for a month to talk about every niche of every character. His notes for the script are bigger than the script. He supplies you with the brain for your character so that when you show up, you know how to do everything. He said, "Just leave all that information in the back of your head and draw from it." If you turn up to work for Shekhar, you'd better have studied the night before.
Q: It must be interesting to be doing Four Feathers for Miramax Films. Didn't Harvey Weinstein pull the plug a few years ago on Calcio, a Miramax movie in which you were going to star, because he wasn't sold on you?
A: Yes. That was about three years ago. Harvey Weinstein didn't want to use me. I guess he didn't want to greenlight it because he thought I couldn't bring in the dollars. He didn't know me or anything. Ironic, isn't it?
Q: I'll bet you and your agents made negotiations very interesting on Four Feathers.
A: [Laughing] Yeah, like, [miming cutting a throat] "Remember me?"
Q: You were offered the starring role in Spider-Man, but turned it down, allowing Tobey Maguire to snap it up. Any regrets?
A: I think its going to be a fantastic movie, but they've got the right guy now. Tobey is going to be great and he's got a passion for it, whereas I never read the comics. I'd feel like I was stealing someone's dream.
Q: Weren't you also talked about to star in X-Men, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Ride with the Devil, Fight Club and The Perfect Storm?
A: They all float by. My agents get so annoyed. Half the time, I tell them, "Just don't bother me with anything unless it's really something right." Sometimes I don't even know what's going back and forth between the studios and my agency. I have to be really careful because at this point in my career, people just want to hire me to hire me. They tell you, "You're perfect for any role," even if the guy is divorced with two kids and he's been a fisherman for 20 years. I'm like, "I'm 21," and they're like, "That's OK, we can write him younger." Then I'll say, "I'm not right for this role. You're just giving it to me because other people want to use me." You have to stay true to what you think.
Q: What's your take on why Americans are taking to Aussies like Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and yourself?
A: My friends and I have a theory about the stagnant quality of acting that is coming out of Hollywood right now. It's some strange circle of actors imitating actors, all living in the same city, all breathing down each other's necks, going to the same places, the same parties. Even the younger actors are seeing how these other actors-imitating-actors act. It's a matter of Hollywood reaching out for new blood. And it's fashion--Australians right now are in fashion.
Q: How are you perceived in Australia?
A: If you make it in America, Australians love to stamp you with their flag and claim you as theirs. But when I was living there, no one was giving me work.
Q: What types of films would you love to do?
A: Musicals, like those amazing ones with Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. They're what made me want to do movies in the first place. Musicals transport us to other places, where actors can really play it up. I guess in some people's eyes, guys dancing around can look queeny, but I think it's very, very cool.
Q: How do you like seeing yourself on the big screen?
A: It's always a little weird. I have a strange mug. See me from different angles and I look very different. The camera does whatever it wants to do with me and that's beyond my control.
Q: How good of an actor do you think you are?
A: I think I'm all right. I'm learning. With acting, there isn't any rule book. People try to write rule books on acting, but that's like trying to give someone a rule book on how to think, which they do in L.A. It's such a strange concept to try to make acting competitive, like with all the awards and all. How do you judge one performance against another? Would they give an award for Best Person of the Year? Like, we've looked around and you're the best person this year. I mean, why?
Q: So, I take it you're not too big on the Oscars.
A: At the end of the day, the Academy Awards are just a big fucking TV show. I mean, who really gives a shit? It's only a big show because they drag in every star in the book, broadcast it all around the world and so it makes big bucks. Take away the TV show, the glitz and glam and none of the actors would show up. If the Oscars were just in some hotel with someone going, "Here's your award," it'd be like, "Fuck it." Who'd turn up?
Q: What are you going to do when they want to trot you out in a tux with a beautiful copresenter on your arm?
A: Oh, but that's fun. That's like "Ye Olde Hollywood Tradition." Everyone wants to step down that red carpet and live movie magic.
Q: Speaking of old Hollywood traditions, you're now dating a famous actress, Heather Graham. Has the press attention been overwhelming?
A: You've got to be daft if you think it's not going to come. Your eyes are open. You see it. You read it. One thing I learned is that whatever they write or say doesn't affect your actual life with your friends and your family. They never judge you upon anything that's written or said. It only affects the people outside of your circle who read and believe it. The more [the press] bullshits and comes up with crazy stuff, the funnier it gets.
Q: What did you read that made you laugh loudest?
A: The article that said that while I was flying back from Prague or London to L.A., I forced myself into the cockpit during the flight and used their phone so I could call my girlfriend and tell her I loved her. [Laughing]
Q: What's your attraction to Heather?
A: She's so cool. She's a beautiful, beautiful girl. The greatest thing about us is that it's not changing my life. Life is just running smoothly. It's very comfortable with her. We make each other laugh--she's so fucking funny. That's the key. It's fun. It's a good relationship and a very truthful one. I'd love to work with her. I think she's fantastic.
Q: Have you bought her any "friendship" jewelry?
A: I don't believe in showing affection materialistically. I go to great lengths emotionally to show my love. I don't buy Christmas presents ever. If I see something that's good for someone, I'll buy it. But I don't celebrate love or friendship by giving stuff to people. That's why I don't believe in marriage. I don't believe you should have to prove your love by giving someone a gold ring with a diamond on it.
Q: People used to say that Ginger Rogers gave Fred Astaire sex appeal and he gave her class. How do you and Heather add to each other?
A: What we give each other is totally personal. As for how we're observed in the public eye, let people figure that out for themselves. It's their game, not mine.
Q: Have you two been hitting the town a lot?
A: It's funny. Last night, we went out to some club and we're standing in the front of the line. You know how there's the whole "list" thing and there are always people waiting while the bouncer is standing there being Mr. Cool. Anyway, we're standing there a long time and they wouldn't let us in. The promoter sees me and goes, "Get that guy in here! Make sure he gets in." I just dropped my head as they dragged us through. I don't think they were quite sure who I was. It was just, like, "Get that guy...I've seen him somewhere."
Q: Would you rather be out together or staying in?
A: I'm a home bug. When I get home from a shoot, the number one thing I want to do is sit in the house, do my laundry, do dishes, cook--do all that shit that you just usually don't do. When I get home, I don't want to go out; I want to scour the bathtub. [Laughing]
Q: You've been living in L.A. for four years. Have you made many friends here?
A: The thing about Hollywood is that everyone's afraid to be mean. [Laughing] If they really don't like you, they won't tell you. It's all like, "Hey, so happy to see you," but I'm always wary of anyone who's that happy to see me. Everyone here is really good friends with everyone because they're afraid to get on someone's bad side, someone who might stir something up in the future. Hollywood is a town where you have a thousand associates but you can count your friends on the fingers of one hand.
Q: Don't some of your mates from Australia live in the house you recently purchased in Silver Lake?
A: They've lived there for about four-and-a-half months. I've only lived in it for three weeks. They're camping out. Most of them are here because they want to be in this weird world of the movie business.
Q: What kind of house is it?
A: It's a Spanish villa that was built in 1925. It's called "Casa Feliz," or "happy house," and it is. I'm sure it has a history but I haven't had time to get into it. Buying it was my dad's idea. It felt so strange because for five years, I've just been living out of bags, being like gypsy/mystic/journey/travel man all around the world. [Laughing] All of a sudden to feel like, "This is a home. This is where you're stuck." It kind of felt binding. I've gotten over that, though.
Q: Have you taken up painting again?
A: That's slowed down. I've been doing a lot of photographic art. I took so many pictures in Prague. I have a bunch of paintings and photos I've done that I really like, all for different reasons. Some that make me happy, some that make me sad. I'm basically documenting my life in terms of what I see. I don't narrow myself to doing "landscapes" or "faces." If it's a landscape or a person, I'll paint it or photograph it because it interests me. Faces are the most interesting, though.
Q: What's the best gift anyone ever gave you?
A: My parents gave me complete acceptance of who I am and let me leave Perth at the age of 16 so I could go to Sydney and pursue my life. That gave me freedom and acceptance through trust. That's a true gift. What greater gift can anyone give you?
Q: Are you reading any books that help you keep your new life-style in perspective?
A: Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. It's fantastic. It opens everyone's peripheral vision, their perspective on life. You discover how unimportant everything is, emotionally, physically. It smoothes over anything. It's not fact, of course, it's someone's opinion, but a beautiful one.
Q: How satisfied with things are you right now?
A: Well, I'm doing movies I like. When I go to London next week I'll meet with Peter Weir about a project. Now there's someone who's brilliant. It's another costume and battle movie, but I can't wait to sit down and talk to him. So, I'm very excited about things right now. I'm after happiness, longevity, slowing down time. I have no great expectations or future goals. I'm attached to the present. I don't know what I'm doing right after I leave you. I'm that disorganized. Oh, can I borrow that dollar for the valet? Thanks, man.
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Stephen Rebello interviewed Jennifer Love Hewitt for the February issue of Movieline.