Interview: Heath
Ledger
Interview by Clint Morris
Interview with Heath Ledger
NEWS: Heath Ledger 1979 - 2008
Starred in the movies Brokeback Mountain, Ned
Kelly, The Patriot.
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Heath
Ledger with Michelle Williams
in a scene from Brokeback
Mountain
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Heath Ledger with director
Ang Lee
on the set of Brokeback Mountain
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Heath
Ledger shows off his cheek
bones, ealier in his burgeoning
career
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It’s amazing what bringing a child into this
world
can do for someone. Since I last sat across from Australian actor
turned hot Hollywood commodity Heath Ledger - which was in 2004, to
discuss Ned Kelly - he seems to have matured, found
gratification and largely, discovered his voice.
Fatherhood
definitely seems to agree with 26-year-old Heathcliff Andrew Ledger.
Back in his native Australia to promote his
new film Brokeback
Mountain, a divisive yarn about two male ranch hands that
fall in love, Ledger glows more than a freshly pressed glow-in-the-dark
Ghostbusters T-Shirt when asked about baby Matilda.
"It’s
going great," he smiles. "It’s exhausting, but it’s
a pleasure…a pleasure waking up to your daughter."
Not that Ledger’s keen on talking about his
personal
life - his wife, and mother to his child, is Brokeback
Mountain co-star Michelle Williams - for the extent of the
interview.
He rather promptly shifts the subject
to the film he’s in town to plug.
What
attracted Ledger to his latest role was the chance to work with
acclaimed Hong Kong director Ang Lee. "I don’t think I would
have done it if it had been in anyone else’s hands," he says.
Having said that, Lee wasn’t painless to
work for,
explains Ledger - but his toughness ultimately helped Ledger give the
stellar performance he does in the film.
"There’s
two sides to Ang’s direction - there’s the
pre-production, which is incredibly thorough and private, and then
there’s the shooting side, when he just doesn’t say
anything at all. Nothing. If you haven’t done your homework -
too bad. It was clear that the shooting time was his time to create.
"He’s also very set in his ways. He prepares
you so
much that he doesn’t cloud you with direction. There are not
many instructions; it’s always just crisp and clear. He also
doesn’t patronise you by slapping you on the back after every
scene and saying ‘that was great, that was great…
let’s try one more.’
"In
fact, he never compliments you at all. Yet, it makes you try harder -
and you do end up doing better."
The role was also
quite an exigent one for Ledger, but thankfully he had a great co-star
in Jake Gyllenhaal, who was also a virgin to such taxing material.
"It’s not like we sat around and drank at
bars
together before we did the movie, but we were in the same place, and
he’s a great guy - so it made things a lot easier," the
actor, whose credits include The Four Feathers, Two
Hands and The Patriot, admits.
From
the get-go, Ledger was always attached to play the quieter of the two
men, homophobe Ennis. Had he been asked to play the more confident Jack
- he wouldn’t have done it.
"I
wouldn’t have cast me as [Jack]. I personally, enjoyed the
complexity of Ennis, the lack of words he had to express himself, his
inability to love. I liked how masculine he was going to be. I liked
that he was a homophobic guy that falls in love with another man. I
just don’t think I could’ve played Jack."
Not that Ledger could just turn up on the
set and just play
Ennis. He had to do quite a bit of research, he says. "You had to have
a through understanding of who you were playing. I put a lot of time
into his physical traits, like his posture, or lack of, and his voice."
For Ennis’s voice, Ledger decided to do a
"Wyoming
accent… a little bit of Texas," adding, "Because he was so
clenched as a person, I wanted my mouth to be clenched. Whenever words
came out - they had to be punching their way out."
The
most enjoyable part of shooting the film was getting to spend time in
the outdoors. Ledger says he’s "pretty good on horseback" so
enjoyed getting around on horses, and "we were working in the Rockies,
so it was just majestic."
Though there has been
some counterattack against the movie, Ledger’s happy that
most people have reacted favourably to the film.
"I
heard at one point that West Virginia was going to ban it, but
that’s a state that was still lynching people until about
twenty years ago," he laughs. "I think it’s proven to have
the opposite effect. All of the American states, besides the odd one
here and there, have ended up seeing it. It seems to have proven
everyone wrong. I think people just want to see it so they can have an
opinion on it. It’s really interesting…I think
it’s going to turn into some kind of phenomenon."
Though
he says it wasn’t an enjoyable experience to make ("because
it was such a lonely story, and therefore, I had a lonely time making
the film - which you kinda just drag around with you for months
after"), he believes Brokeback Mountain is "the
best film I’ve done, for sure."
So
what’s the most fun he’s ever had on a film?
"Working for Terry Gilliam (on The Brothers Grimm)
was the most fun. I just adore him."
Ledger says
he’s going to let wife Michelle Williams go out and work this
year whilst he stays home and plays ‘Mr.Mom’ for a
while. "We don’t want to be working at the same time, and
I’m really in tune with fatherhood right now - so
I’m going to do that."
One thing he will
be suiting up for though is the upcoming Awards season, something he
never saw coming: "You can’t think that far ahead when
you’re making something. You’ve no idea how
something is going to be perceived way down the line. If you think like
that - your performance will be more manufactured. You have to pretend
nobody is ever going to see it in order to really bare you soul."
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