'There's little anyone can do to prepare you for how you're going to feel and how you're going to react to all this.' Heath Ledger knows.  He had his 'How are you going to react to all this?' moment in a boardroom at Columbia Pictures headquarters in Culver City, Los Angeles in 2000. The lead man could have cried but he didn't - leading men don't cry.  Instead the 21 year old sat, intimidated, by a bevy of cloying studio publicists and marketing experts.  "It really freaked me out [listening to] all these people talking about how they were planning to promote me as a product," he recalls.

Ledger slips on a shonky American accent: "OK, kid, we've got nine countries around the world and covers of this magazine, covers of that, and we want to do these TV shows - do you want to do those shows?"  He didn't know.  This was only his third Hollywood movie and yet he was being told he was to be the face of Columbia's A Knight's Tale.  Ledger also understood he was being positioned as a new Sony star (the Japanese conglomerate owns Columbia), and he henceforth would shoulder some responsibility for its success.

After being bombarded with information for two hours he was asked what he thought.  The usually reserved actor stood up, pushed his chair out and said, "I have to go to the bathroom". . . "And when I got to the bathroom, I shut the door and just sat there and started to shiver.  I wanted to burst out in tears".  On returning to the boardroom, he announced he had to leave before dragging his agent outside and asking him to finish the meeting.  Welcome to the big time, baby.

Still in his mid-twenties, Heath Ledger has lived a Hollywood life in full.  He even came to Los Angeles skint.  Then, his rapid ascent to leading -man star status was swifter than for any other Australian before him.  And he knows it.  But he readily admits he wanted it, so there are no complaints.  Not that it was entirely clear he wanted to be an actor when he was young.

Despite being named after Wuthering Heights' male protagonist, Heathcliff, there was nothing melodramatic about Ledger's childhood.  Born and raised in Perth, Australia's isolated city on the Indian Ocean, Ledger showed only a passing interest in acting until his older sister Kate lured him to the Globe Shakespeare Company.  Slowly, an intrigue became an interest and Heath was cast in local theatre productions such as Peter Pan, Name of the Father, and Bugsy Malone.  His parents, who divorced when he was ten, showed little enthusiasm for their kids' theatrical interests; his father pushed him towards sport, particularly hockey.   His teachers were even less involved.

At sixteen, Ledger left school and embarked on an adventure of a lifetime.  With his best mate, Trevor DiCarlo, he drove the width of Australia to Sydney.  His parents were mortified but knew they couldn't stop him.  The boy wanted to prove something.

He soon did, quickly earning occasional commercials work and a role in the angsty teen film Blackrock.  That led to the more challenging role of gay cyclist Snowy Bowles in the ABC's TV series Sweat, which ran for one season.

Other work came, including a small role in the children's movie Paws, and an unheralded stint on the long-running Australian soap Home and Away (his future girlfriend, Naomi Watts, had previously done six weeks on the series herself).  "I had a total of six working days there that ended up being like 20 episodes," he laughs.  The show doesn't trumpet him as a former star.  "They probably didn't even notice me," he smiles.

Then came the break.  Ledger was cast as the lead in the mythological fantasy TV series for the US Fox Network, Roar (produced by former teen idol, Shaun Cassidy).  Ledger finally had a career - but not the one he wanted.  "I hadn't done anything in Australia, really."  He describes his early roles as 'typecasting'.  "On Home and Away [I was] the blonde beach boy who came in to have sex with Sally [Kate Ritchie] for the first time," he chuckles.

He obtained enough work in Australia to live comfortably because "I don't need that much money to survive".  Satisfaction was harder to come by.  According to director Gregor Jordan, "Heath was never a normal 18 year old, he was worldly, articulate and not overwhelmed by things at all."

In 1997 he moved to Los Angeles.  Ledger says coyly, "I just went over there, I'd met a girl and moved here with her and I just hit the auditioning scene."  The girl was Lisa Zane, his 36-yr-old Roar co-star.  It was a personal and professional journey.  It was half and half [for me] because I didn't expect to get any work but I thought, what the f**k, while I've got the opportunity . . ."

Ledger's cause was aided considerably by one LA-based Australian, who advised Ledger to strike while the iron was hot.  He did.  Despite not wanting a manager, nor foreseeing a future with one, Ledger thought he initially needed a middleman. "I couldn't get on the phone myself and say, "hey, I think I'm pretty great", He smiles. "Especially when you don't [think you're pretty great] - at that time, anyway.  You have to be a certain type of person to do that, I guess that's why you have managers".  But once you have an agent, your manager is superfluous. "Your manager just makes you feel good and drives you to parties and stuff", Ledger laughs.

His manager proved invaluable and was probably the reason why ledger didn't flounder like so many other young Australian actors.  Nevertheless, finding an agent was problematic; the Australian saw their insincerity: "they're excited by everyone who walks through the door".  And agents' inducements can be exciting.  "You'd go to meetings and they'd bring out sodas and cookies, stuff like that, or they'd ring before you got there and ask, "What does he like?" 
Thankfully, Ledger had someone else taking the calls, telling them, "I dunno, croissants?"  "And you'd turn up and there'd be sugar-coated croissants on the table!"

Ledger met six agents, but none felt right.  Too much bullsh*t.  He settled eventually on "a younger guy who had no clients".  Steve Alexander at CAA. Alexander had produced movies [1994's Cafe' Society] "and he just had a fire in his belly."  A leap of faith?  Undoubtedly.  But Ledger contends, "I just didn't like the rest of the people I'd met.  They were just.  I don't know, have you ever seen Swimming With Sharks?"  Not only did the dark Hollywood satire of a tyrannical, bombastic agent mirror Ledger's experience, but Alexander had produced the movie.  Ledger's still with him, as are Wes Bentley, Jared Leto and Shannyn Sossamon (his A knights Tale co-star).  "As [our] crew moved up so did he; now he's got an office with a window," he laughs. "He's out of the broom closet."

Ledger's Next break was unlikely.  He was cast as the lead in Two Hands, Gregor Jordan's debut feature.  Australia might have forgotten him but Jordan hadn't.  Two Hands producer Marian Macgowan says, "He was known around town but never made that impact in the early days."  Macgowan and Jordan suspected Ledger had the "star quality" to carry the film.  Jordan took a punt and flew to meet Ledger in LA."   The thing that distinguishes people like him is their complete determination and focus," Macgowan says.  "He has a very clear sense of himself, he's very mature and that's what he projects on screen - clarity, determination, focus. He knows who he is. I remember one casting agent saying years ago "He's not a great actor but he's a star". Hollywood soon noticed.  At least the team behind the teen parody of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, 10 things I Hate About You, did.

A self-confessed poor auditioner, Ledger concedes he was bamboozled by the way Hollywood worked.  "But I never really worried because you can't let them intimidate you; you just have to realise they're human beings and they once shat in their pants as well" he notes dryly.  "If you take them off their pedestals and treat them like normal people, they sit back and treat you like a normal person. Australians have an incredible knack of being able to do that to people, bring them down to their level, disarm them.”

It was a necessary tactic with the 'really cocky' director of 10 Things, Gil Junger.  At the audition's conclusion, Junger, noticing a nervous Ledger, asked him about the 'Theatresports' on his resume.  On being told it was acting games and improvising, Ledger says Junger 'sat back and said, "I want you to sell me the pair of shoes I'm already wearing".'  That's not improvising so much as an example of Hollywood's penchant for repackaging.  Ledger still laughs at the ludicrous notion. "So I had to get off my chair and sell him his shoes.  And he bought them!"

To this day the actor finds auditions 'humiliating', even if he's in the enviable position of only needing to audition for a role "if I really want to go after it",  he says.  "There's something about auditions where you don't feel like you're performing. [In fact ] you're not.  You're being judged and tested.  It does something to your state of mind - for me anyway - in terms of how much you relax and how much you're breathing."  He says directors only see a crack-shattered' image of the actor.  "I've f**ked up a lot of auditions.  Who cares?  I think everyone feels that way somewhat."

After nabbing the co-lead role in 10 Things, Ledger returned to Sydney to shoot Two Hands.  Days later, he flew back to the US to make 10 Things.  His first Hollywood shoot wasn't too different from his first lead role in Australia, chiefly because the US $18 million film wasn't that 'big'.   And he was allowed to retain his Aussie accent.  He soon encountered one striking difference though.

"It was weird because I [was] straight from an industry where pretty much the actors and the crew all get paid the same.   There's no separate unions for grips and make-up artists and at any point crew members can walk up to an actor who's out of line and say, "Listen, mate, stop acting like a little c***."  And the actor will go, "All right."  Also, Australian actors will pick up gear and help them move to get a shot done because they're running out of time.  Then you come up on a set [in Hollywood] where there are 14-,15 year-old kids who have this sense of entitlement, they've been earning this huge amount of money since they were ten or something".

At one point Ledger offered to fetch coffee for some crew members: "Nothing special, that's what you do."  While he was at the coffee machine with the order, an assistant director came over and 'literally slapped my wrist and said, "You're not allowed to do that, you can't do that. Just get back to your trailer." . . . I couldn't believe it.  All of a sudden I [understood] the machine that creates the monster in actors".  He saw how such pampering produced actors who 'start believing they're special'.

The people who treat them like that then turn around and call them arrogant actors but it's the hand that rocks the cradle."  That said, "There's probably been one actor I've worked with who's been fairly difficult.  The guys on 10 Things were all lovely.  When I look back, they weren't bad, they weren't really rude, it was just the way they held themselves.  It's merely a difference between [Hollywood] and how we hold ourselves back home."

Still, many of the cast of 10 Things have remained just that - kids.  Only Ledger and his co-star Julia Stiles have progressed to more substantial film careers.  Ledger cracks that his portrayal of shy teen Patrick Verona was 'a pretty amazing performance, wasn't it?'  It was more than many could have hoped for though; the film earned US$38 million at the US box office.  Ledger earned close to US$100,000 and when he returned to Australia to promote it in 1999, he was the Hollywood leading man his homeland had never heard of.

 While publicising Two Hands in Australia soon afterwards, publicist Amanda Huddle says Ledger transformed from a shy kid into a seasoned pro.  "A lot came at once and he handled it so well, better than someone like Colin Farrell seems to be [doing] today."  He was still malleable; he didn't have an Australian agent and he came from the US unaccompanied.  

The Two Hands distributor took advantage.  "Now he wouldn't do the things we made him do in a million years, nor should he."  Admits Huddle, who pushed him through an arduous schedule of interviews and promotional appearances.  "At times he acted like he was 75 and had been doing it for years, at others like he was a 20-year old kid."

Ledger's co-workers suspect his father Kim is the font of sage advice and the affirmation that keeps him grounded.  He needed that advice during Two Hands' successful Australian launch, when Ledger hid the fact that he had just been cast as Mel Gibson's son in the US$110 million historical epic The Patriot.  His career was rocketing.  Ledger demurs. "Things just don't quickly accelerate because after movies were finished, it still took them eight months to come out.  Eight months of sitting around on your bum.  During this period only two films 'were thrown my way.'  Both were teen flicks, nothing interesting.  "I wanted to be in rooms with bigger directors contending bigger roles in bigger projects."

Macgowan says, "Another thing that distinguishes people like him is the choices they make.  He made the right choices. "Yet only a few years later his choices nearly stalled his career.  Ledger admits, "I sat on my arse for over a year as a beach bum, surfing the California coast and living in Laurel Canyon (a suburb of Los Angeles) with a mate.  "It was a good break because I'd been going for a while," He adds.  He wasn't perturbed about being unemployed.  "I didn't care because the beauty about being an Australian in Hollywood is we've got this sense of fearlessness that comes from knowing we can always go home.  It's not a bad f**king back-up plan.  It's a beautiful country with work, if you have to.  So I thought, f**k it, I might as well stick it out and try and do something I'm proud of rather than just cash in quickly."

He could be proud of The Patriot.  He admits it 'saved' him but "I had to fight for it."  Five auditions and a screen test with the Godfather of Australian actors, Mel Gibson, were 'nerve-wracking'.  Ledger concedes his auditions were terrible, yet producers Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich chose Ledger over Ryan Phillippe.

It was his first Hollywood movie with an American accent.  Unfortunately, he was left to find the accent himself because he wasn't provided with a dialect coach.  "It's a US $150 million movie, massive, but they just kinda forgot about a couple of tiny things that I really wanted.  There were times before I started shooting where I was banging my head against a wall saying, "How can I get out of this?"  But I think that about every job I do: “I’ve gotta get out of this now.  I was just lying, I can’t act, I was just fooling you guys”.’    Even today, panic attacks haunt him before every job.   Other actors, including Nicole Kidman, talk of similar self-doubts. Now he believes it's part of his method.

"People have got their own processes for preparing - you need to summon extreme amounts of confidence."  Ledger explains.  "At some point you've got to get to the place where you just have to give in to it.  My way of getting there is by beating the sh*t out of myself first and just saying, "I'm hopeless.  What am I doing here? I can't act" . . . Then you get to a place where you're like, f**k it, this is a challenge and I have to turn it around, I've got to be strong now, I can do this.    But it's a long process; I usually don't feel like that until after the first day."

He had to master much more before The Patriot began filming.  "I'd done a bit of horse-riding before," he says with understatement.  "Generally, before you work - even if you've been riding since you were two years old - they still insist on teaching you how to trot, how to get on the horse, how to get off.  Every time they take you back to basics and you tell them, "Honestly, I'm OK getting on",  but they say, "No, we've got to teach you".’

The Patriot signalled Ledger's real step up in commercial and audience popularity.  He played Gibson's son, a patriotic warrior in what he describes as "a big American flag-waving bonanza . . . They love that sh*t, so all of a sudden I was the kid that was The Patriot to America and, honestly, it was the last thing I'd want to do."  Yet the movie exemplified Hollywood's globalization; it starred two Australians and was directed by a German.  Ledger says, "That was kind of a joke on set."

Another quiet spell followed.  His lead role in a soccer movie called Calcio, set in Italy, disappeared upon the film's late cancellation and he missed the Ewan McGregor role in Moulin Rouge!  Then his life changed forever.  The studio behind The Patriot, Columbia, wanted to make ledger a star with a lead role in A Knights Tale.  "Actors are just products to studios, no different to what this lighter is to Bic," he says, picking up his disposable lighter. ‘ "The studio finds someone and goes, "I think this could be a good product that we could invest money in.  So once we've built him and turned him into something, let's offer him a bunch of movies at Columbia and we'll keep pumping him up and he'll be our guy and we'll start making money off him." ’

Ledger concedes he was seduced by the notion of not having to audition for the medieval romp.  "Then I began to feel the weight and pressure of the machinery.  I began to feel like a cog," he says.  The promotional posters made obvious who Columbia had invested in.  They were filled with Ledger's face and the tagline 'He will rock you'.  It was the kind of vanity promotion usually reserved for Tom Cruise but Ledger lacked the vanity.  He almost self-combusted in that boardroom meeting mentioned earlier.  "It scared me so much I said, "I can't, I just don't want to do any of it, don't want to be part of it".  Eventually, a compromise was reached.  Ledger's responsibilities halved.  "Now I understand it a little more but at the time it was such a culture shock," he says.   With hindsight, he says he panicked because "no-one had really explained this side of the business to me."

Ledger felt it most in the following months.  His industry 'anointment' was landing the cover of US Vanity Fair in August 2000.  It's funny, it was an anointment but it isn't as organic as people think.  You are something people have invested in.  So you lose power?  Not necessarily.  Ledger believes.  "You gain power and you lose it.  You lose control [of] your life, where it's going and the stages in which you live.  This lifestyle is so inconsistent.  Every movie that comes out presents you another level, whether it's bad or good, and it's an extra $40 million worth of publicity invested in you.  You gain power if you're in it for the right reasons.  It gives you the opportunity to work with inspiring people."  Ledger consciously reminded himself to keep his head and 'stay cool'.  "But then you get to the point where you think, oh f**k it, my head ain't going anywhere so stop worrying about it and get on with life."

Someone suggested media training to the actor but he passed. "Ultimately there is nothing you can do to prepare anyone for how your life's gonna change, how the way you've been living it for the past 20 years changes . . . I flew myself to America to get into this position so it's no-one's fault but my own.  I can only be grateful for what I have and just put up with the rest."  Not that he expected such success although "I believed that I had just a good a chance as anyone else in this city."

Confidence helps.  As an Australian who worked with Ledger on 10 Things says, "Even then, he definitely had that 'thing' that makes them actors.  He's tall, has that deep voice and knows exactly when to smile or charm people, as good actors do."  Macgowan agrees.  "You take away his voice and he was just another good-looking young actor, albeit an action hero who can act.”  Ledger realises confidence is a requisite due to the constant put-downs.  "There has to be something inside you, whether it's pride or dignity, that says, "I'm going to keep going".  I don't know what it is though."

Perhaps it is resilience, coupled with the Aussie trait to 'not give a sh*t'?  Ledger agrees.  "We come from an empty nation, so we are grateful for things, in a sense.  I was just grateful to be there, let alone be out at meetings in LA.  The other thing is we have something to fall back on, we can always go home.  And we are spawned from a hugely modest society, not self-promoting, so that's a quality people pick up on when you're in the room.  They don't see us sitting there trying to market ourselves saying "Bling bling, buy us!"

Most of the current generation of Australian actors have shown enormous resilience.  Ledger still sees them come and go, his Los Feliz house is 'an Aussie hostel for actors'.  Most stay two or three months before the task overwhelms them or they run out of money.  "It takes time and patience just to lay the foundation," he says.  There is no particular cachet in being an Australian in Hollywood.  Americans might think Australians quaint but "they think everyone's quaint."

His homeland isn't necessarily as welcoming though.  Sure, Ledger has felt the plaudits and pride from his countrymen and he shares the excitement any Aussie feels when another Australian achieves on the world stage.  Yet the Australian media also cuts them down.  Ledger's felt it, although the blows are softened when they come from 11000 kilometres away.  "The media love to promote but then they've got a sense of humour about how they cut people down.  They're like: "You're great, you're fantastic" and then when you're not looking, they go “snap”, cut you down, sit around and giggle and crack a beer and say, "Yeah, we taught him a lesson".’

Ledger's love life, his apparently petulant behaviour, even his appearances on talk show, have become grist for the Australian media's mill.  "Just any tiny little thing they'll jump on and go, "Did you see that, that sign of 'something'?" he laughs.  He will return home one day.  He misses too much: "Friends, family, the weather, surf, the beaches.  Quite a lot.  Even the bread's sh*t [in LA].  It's all sourdough, although we found a meat pie shop in Santa Monica that also does custard tarts."  His grin is huge.

"Maybe once you move back [home] and people get over the fact you've moved back, it'll settle down and people will let me be.  I know that in the general public are more chilled out and if they do come up to you it's more the "Good on ya, mate, good luck to ya" or "God, what's it like?"   There's this general curiosity and it's more genuine than from people over here.  In LA no-one gives a sh*t, everyone acts like a star so you wouldn't know who's who!"

Before then, a career awaits.  Despite experiencing so many of Hollywood's tribulations, Ledger is still a freshman.  His choices of the last three years emphasise that; a number of misfires - The Sin Eater (The Order), The Four Feathers - distracted many from Ledger's fine, and AFI Award- nominated performance in Ned Kelly.  Ledger attracted bright notices, even if the film didn't.   It was the one professional high in two years of lows.  The lows barely seem to matter.  In less than 18 months in 2003-4, Ledger was to juggle The Lords of Dogtown for Catherine Hardwicke, The Brothers Grimm for Terry Gilliam, Casanova for Lasse Hallstrom and the role of a gay cowboy for Ang Lee in Brokeback Mountain.

"I am someone who likes to learn from my mistakes," Ledger says. "But I generally try not to regret anything.  Who cares?  [If I did] I wouldn't be sitting here now."

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Transcribed by Phyllis, HeathHEATHENS.com