Back to the Archives 2006: Heath Ledger Cover Story

In 2026, The Big Issue celebrates its 30th birthday – the perfect time to revisit our fave stories from the past three decades. We’re rewinding 20 years to our encounter with the legendary Heath Ledger – Rose Byrne’s much-missed friend and co-star.

Squaring the Ledger

By Gaynor Flynn

‘Rude’, ‘arrogant’ and ‘moody’ were just a few of the printable words used to describe Heath Ledger last year. In March, the actor spat, swore and even threw eggs, at paparazzi. In August, he antagonised an entire network (Channel 7) when he refused to discuss his pregnant girlfriend Michelle Williams (Dawson’s Creek) on air. But in September, at the Venice International Film Festival, Ledger behaved impeccably. Despite being at the centre of a media storm, in sweltering heat, with no fewer than three films to promote – the young star remained cool, calm and charming.

“I’m a very easygoing person in real life,” the 26 year old assures me as he settles in for our chat. “Giving an interview is just a very different situation than being at home and talking to my family and friends. So talking to you makes me feel strange because I feel like I have to design something for the press that’s not there. But the last thing I want to be is rude to people. It’s just that…in a perfect world, I’d rather not talk about myself.”

If that’s the case, then Ledger’s world is about to get a whole lot less perfect. After what can only be described as a two-year slump, he’s back in business with Brothers Grimm, Casanova, Candy and Brokeback Mountain. Every one of these movies has increased the media’s interest in all things Heath.

But none more than Brokeback, which scooped the top prize at Venice and sent the Oscar rumour mill into overdrive. Directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), the film is based on a short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author E Annie Proulx (The Shipping News) and is a powerful tale of forbidden love. Set against the sweeping vistas of Wyoming, it follows the story of two young cowboys who meet in the summer of 1963 and unexpectedly fall for each other. But this is pre-gay rights and even if it wasn’t, there are some societies that may never accept same-sex lovin’…and Wyoming is one of them.

Ennis (Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) know their love is dangerous and despite feelings that run far deeper than they could ever have imagined, they toe the societal line. They both marry, have children and try to reconcile themselves to a life based on secrecy and repression. Yet the yearning never fades and for 20 years they resign themselves to brief, stolen idylls back on Brokeback.

Lee has taken one of the most iconic of movie genres and re-imagined it. It’s an audacious achievement that defies gender, nationality and era; even more because it’s ostensibly a gay love story with A-list stars.

“There has never been a homosexual cowboy movie,” says producer James Schamus proudly. It took seven years and a small, determined film division to prove to Hollywood that this cinematic frontier was worth exploring. Yet the film is politically timely, given the sustained debate in the US over same-sex marriages. Not that the film’s star will admit to being politically motivated.

“If it does have a positive effect then that’s wonderful but it was never intentioned,” says Ledger. When asked to air his own views on the subject, he politely declines, saying, “I don’t really wish to share my political views.” Not because he doesn’t have them, after all Ledger has been spotted at anti-war rallies, but because he doesn’t think “anyone is interested.”

“Ennis struck a chord in me,” Ledger explains. “His inner struggle against his genetic make-up, against the structure that had been given to him by his father and grandfathers. This guy was forced into a homophobic mind frame and then ends up being in love with a man. I found that fascinating.”

Having joined a local theatre company in Perth at the age of 10 and hurtled across the Nullarbor aged 16 in search of his big break, Ledger is not one to shirk a challenge. Brokeback more than fitted the bill. Many a producer still believes playing a gay man is career suicide. Tom Hanks, the argument goes, got away with it in Philadelphia because there was no real kissing and no sex scenes. In Brokeback there are both, and these scenes are frank and fierce and passionate.

“Hollywood forces you to think like that [about the possible homophobic backlash],” says Ledger, “but when I started thinking about it, I thought, ‘What the f**k do I have to risk?’ I’m not out to conquer Hollywood. I certainly won’t base my decisions on pleasing Hollywood. Ennis was the most masculine and strongest character I’ve ever played. That’s the point of the movie, the contradiction in this person.”

If Brokeback does destroy his pretty-boy pin-up image, it seems no one would be happier than the actor himself. The teen flick 10 Things I Hate About You made him an overnight heartthrob, the idea of which he despised. But it was also an image aggressively marketed by the studios. After A Knight’s Tale in 2001 however, Ledger had had enough of playing “blond bimbos” and set about deconstructing the image once and for all. He accepted a small role in the grim drama Monster’s Ball, followed by Ned Kelly (hiding his Hollywood good-looks beneath a bushy beard) and the religious horror The Sin Eater. While the films hardly challenged the box office statisticians, they showed that Ledger wanted to be seen as a serious actor in serious roles. When director Terry Gilliam was looking to cast The Brothers Grimm, it was The Sin Eater’s cinematographer who suggested Ledger.

“He called me up and said, ‘this kid, he’s fantastic,” says Gilliam. “‘He’s as good as Johnny [Depp]; he’s got the stuff; he’s really brave; he’s wild.” Ledger then further surprised Gilliam by asking to play Jake Grimm. “I thought he’d play Will Grimm,” says the director, “because he’s the dashing one and Heath plays those kinds of things.”

Not any more. Okay, so he did do a little dashing in Casanova, but that was for Lasse Hallström (The Cider House Rules), who Ledger describes as “a serious director.” It was also something of an antidote to Brokeback.

“Shooting in Italy for five months was like a working holiday,” he says. “Getting picked up every morning in a boat to go to work was brilliant. And when I got there, I realised that it wasn’t Fellini’s version of Casanova, it was Walt Disney’s. So there was no point in taking it too seriously, it was a family comedy. So for those reasons, it was fun.”

Brokeback, on the other hand, was “probably the most difficult role I will ever have to play,” he says. “Because I had to put myself in these positions that I hadn’t been in and I didn’t really want to kiss Jake but then I just felt like that’s probably why I should do it.”

Candy was another project Ledger chose because it “frightened” him. Directed by Australian theatre legend Neil Armfield, “it’s a love story between two heroin addicts,” explains Ledger. It stars Abbie Cornish (Somersault) and Geoffrey Rush, who puts in a typically brilliant turn as a gay junkie. “It’s actually a really beautiful film,” says Ledger, “and it’s the first time I’ve used my own accent in eight years, and I forgot how liberating that could be.”

But for now, Ledger is looking forward to taking it easy. He became a dad in October last year and is now based in Brooklyn, where his “better half” has lived for three years. “Right now it’s just about living life,” he says. “When you’re working, you’re just so consumed every day by the story. When I’m not working I just try to consume myself with my own story and try and continue to write that.”

Published in ed#757

Come Together