08 September 2006
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2006
HEATH LEDGER: CANDY
by: LIAM LACEY
For larger picture, click thumbnail.
The Star: Rangy, blond 27-year-old Australian actor. He and his sister, Kate, were named after the main characters in Emily Brontė's Wuthering Heights, perhaps setting up his career as a Hollywood heartthrob. After moving from his native Perth to Sydney at the age of 17, he played in a series of small Australian films before being cast in the 1999 teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. He shunned teen-hunk typecasting with a determinedly varied range of roles, including The Patriot, A Knight's Tale, Monster's Ball and The Order, reached a peak with last year's Oscar nomination for his minimalist tour de force as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain and then appeared in Disney's Casanova.
The Film: Candy, an Australian doomed-drug romance in the tradition of The Panic in Needle Park. Based on Luke Davies's autobiographical heroin novel, it co-stars Abbie Cornish as the title character and Geoffrey Rush as an avuncular drug dealer. **½ (Screening tomorrow at 1:30 p.m., Paramount 1; and Sat. Sept. 16, 1:15 p.m., Varsity 2.)
The Story: Now, just what is Ledger trying to prove? He's just come off an Oscar-nominated career high as a taciturn gay Wyoming cowboy, followed by a turn in a Disney hit as one of history's most famous heterosexuals, and he follows that up with -- what? A part as a junkie poet in a low-budget Australian film, of course.
"I always wanted to find a film where I could work without an accent for a change," Ledger explains. "It wasn't so much I was looking for an indie movie as that there isn't very much else available in Australia."
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For research, Ledger and his co-star Cornish (Somersault) took a video camera and went to an addiction support group, where "we met this gentleman who has been a junkie for 20 years. He took us into this boardroom and dumped a big rifle case on the table and it was a completely realistic prosthetic arm, which veins connected to blood bags at either end. He showed us how to find a vein and inject the needle at the right angle. He was practically salivating: 'Oh, this is a good one!'
"To be honest," says Ledger, "I'm not sure how much research the part required. I've smoked a joint before so I know what it's like to feel high, and there's so much media out there about drug abuse, we all sort of know how it plays out."
Currently, he's in Montreal, preparing to shoot I'm Not There, a "wildly ambitious and incredibly creative" biography of Bob Dylan from filmmaker Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, Safe). Ledger is one of seven actors, including fellow Australian Cate Blanchett, to represent the singer-songwriter at different stages of his life.
Then, in 2008, he'll star in perhaps his highest-profile film yet -- the next Batman movie, The Dark Knight, in a role previously inhabited by no less than Jack Nicholson.
"I've always been picky in my choices," says Ledger, "But nowadays, I'm a lot more so."
The change came with the birth of his daughter, Matilda, last fall, with Brokeback Mountain co-star Michelle Williams. "She's such an awesome, beautiful little girl that Michelle and I hate spending five minutes away from her, never mind five months, so it has to be really, really worth it."
Ledger shrugs off the idea that he consciously picks parts to show his versatility: "At the end of the day, what I do in that space of time between 'Action!' and 'Cut!' doesn't change. This period, of the rehearsal leading up to a film, is excruciating. I lose sleep, I'm anxious, excited and nervous and the adrenaline's pumping. Then the first day and the camera rolls, and it's just breathing and believing you're that person, striving for truth and all that. I haven't worked in a year and a half now."
He looks down at his shoe, which is bouncing up and down:
"Look," he says.
"You can see my toe tapping in anticipation."
Source: The Globe and Mail