'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
Heath'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 ustralia 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."
****
HeathHeathens would like to thank Lorraine,
owner of Ledger's Ladies, who was kind enough to ship her copy of
this book to me as a gift.
Transcribed by Phyllis, HeathHEATHENS.com
