Hunky Heath Ledger is a pretty solid actor as well By Joe Williams
POST-DISPATCH FILM CRITIC
Friday, Dec. 15 2006
There are still people who are blind to the fact that Heath Ledger is a great actor. Yet it's a measure of his talent that some of those same people also don't realize he's Australian.
The first of those misperceptions is common about uncommonly handsome actors. Like Leonardo DiCaprio, Ledger has been dismissed as a pretty boy. It didn't help Ledger's credibility that his first Hollywood role was in the 1999 teen flick "10 Things I Hate About You."
His yeoman work in the hits "The Patriot" and "A Knight's Tale" could have paved the way for a lifetime of easy paychecks in action movies and romantic comedies. But since taking a small role in the indie film "Monster's Ball," Ledger has continued to defy expectations.
He did a sly but uncanny impersonation of Val Kilmer as a skateboarder in "Lords of Dogtown" and was a sweetly starry-eyed folklorist in Terry Gilliam's "The Brother's Grimm." In "Brokeback Mountain," he and Jake Gyllenhaal were the first major movie stars to portray gay lovers.
For that role as a closeted cowboy, Ledger, 27, was nominated for an Academy Award. But he had to contend with a general rule that Oscars belong to guys named Hoffman — whether it's Dustin, who ushered in the era of plain protagonists, or Philip Seymour, the ample actor who bested Ledger in last year's competition.
"Brokeback Mountain" itself had to contend with another factor: homophobia. The film was denounced by some groupls and banned by two theatres.
"It didn't surprise me," Ledger said in a recent phone interview. "But it does baffle me that people can express such hatred toward different forms of love. It's a hatred of something in themselves, perhaps."
He acknowledges that some audiences might be uncomfortable with the subject matter of his latest film, "Candy," in which he plays a heroin addict. But he says that passing judgment is antithetical to creating art.
"There are so many curious stories out there, and so many walks of life, that it's our duty as storytellers to represent the diversity of viewpoints on the planet," Ledger says. "Whether we personally agree with them or not is fairly irrelevant. My job in this film was to create sympathy for the character, even though he's behaving atrociously toward himself and toward the woman he says he loves. I find it odd when people get angry that such a story gets told. No one is forcing them to listen."
Those who do listen will hear something they may not have heard before in a Heath Ledger film: his Australian accent. He says it was the first time in eight years that he had acted in his natural voice, which is haltingly soft in real life. Although Ledger lives in Brooklyn with actress Michelle Williams and their infant daughter Matilda, he was eager to work in his native country.
For his vocal chords, it was a short-lived respite. Soon he'll play the Joker in "The Dark Knight," the new Batman movie.
"The Joker," he says, "is definitely an American."
Source: St. Louis Today- - - - - -
** The opinions of Mr. Ledger do not necessarily reflect the views of Heath Heathens or its administration. **