We’re Havin’ a Heath Wave

The screen’s latest Australian, Heath Ledger, his head hidden beneath a medieval knight’s helmet and visor, his body bolted into plat armor, sits atop his steed in the blistering sun here on the back lot of Barrandov Studios in the hills above Prague. Barrandov was built by the family of Czech president Vaclav Havel in the 1930’s, and its sad and illustrious history includes its utilization by German propagandist director Leni Riefenstahl during World War II. Today it is often rented by American producers, enticed here as much for budgetary concerns as aesthetic ones. A Knights Tale, budgeted at around $45 million, would have cost Columbia Pictures twice that if it had been made on a lot in Hollywood.

Ledger is no cut-rate talent, however, having crossed over into the million-dollar-per-film category. “He’s the real thing,” says Amy Pascal, chairman of Columbia Pictures. Bowled over by the dailies she saw of his performance as Mel Gibson’s son in The Patriot, she gambled that audiences would be clamoring to see more of the 21-year-old swashbuckler, and signed off on him for the starring role in A Knights Tale – suggested by one of the stories in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – over many bigger names who were campaigning for the part. Brian Helgeland, who won a screenwritting Oscar along with Curtis Hanson for L.A. Confidential, is a Knights Tale’s writer and director. “When Heath smiles, it’s Errol Flynn,” says Helgeland, summing up much of newcomer Ledger’s old-fashioned appeal. “Once every 50 years a guy like that comes along. For his age, Heath has an incredible manliness about him.” Indeed, few, if any, of the latest batch of dollish bad-boy idols can math Ledger’s effortless ability to convey masculine ease on-screen.

Inside the set’s elaborate jousting arena – which is the size of two football fields – Ledger takes a practice run on his mount. Thundering toward his opponent, with clouds of dirt siwrling about the horses flanks, he handles the 2,000-pound animal with the expertise he developed on the set of The Patriot, which called for him to ride along side Gibson while at the same time shooting a Revolunitary War rifle with historical authenticity. “Sounds like he’s getting even more…antiquidated,” says Kentucky gun-maker Frank House, who built the long rifles for The Patriot and coached the cast on how to use them. “Heath wasn’t no dandy, sissy actor. There wasn’t none of that spoiled-brat stuff. He was very intense and serious. Very studious. Very…contained.”

Hundreds of Czech extras, hanging rapt from the arena’s rafters, watch the proceedings below them. The crew mills about setting up dolly shot of the joust as the rest of the cast kills time listening to music, taking photographs, or laughing at the latest dirty joke making the rounds. Mark Addy, the sweet, plump stripper in the Full Monty, who protrays one of Ledger’s Varlets in the film, and fellow Brit Rufus Sewell the films villian, compare notes regarding their favorite Prague restaurants. Sewell has been on location for seven weeks now but has yet to film a scene. “It’s one of the finest experiences of not working with an actor I’ve ever had,” he says when I asked him about the young leading man. “Pseuds Corner” in Private Eye, where the satirical English fornightly collect fatuous comments, “but the camera just relaxes on him. When the camera hits certain people you can feel it sort of go, ‘Ah, that’s O.K. We’re in good hands here.’ Not many people have that. It makes a star.”

“You can tell this is not Heath’s life,” says Shannyn Sossamon, Ledger’s love interest in the film. It is certainly not hers. Never haing acted before, she was discvored spinning records at Gwyneth Paltrow’s last birthday party. “Because I D.J. in L.A. I’ve seen a lot of ‘actory’ types,” she says the exotically beautifull hoyden, whose first purchase in Prague, after having saved up her per-diem money, was a new turntable. “Heath is not actory.”

“I’ve never met an ator who is actory,” counters Paul Bettany, putting down a copy of Martin Amis’s Experience. Bettany, who plays a comically eloquent Geoffrey Chaucer in the movie, just finished protraying a serial killer in the film adaptations of Amis’s Dead Babies. “That’s always seemed to me to be an apocryphal concept. I mean, I’ve met actors who are wankers, but I’ve met accountants who are wankers, too. I do agree, though, that Heath is a joy to be around… [His relaxation] comes with being given an enormous amount of confidence at a young age. There’s a certain grace in being given a lot of pressure. You’ve got no choice except to be relaxed. You don’t have to fight for anything when so many people are putting that much faith in you. A transformation occurs that has its own volition.” “Mark, darling!” the first assistant director loudly trills. Is this a fey attempt to get Addy into place for the upcoming take? Not at all. It is code the crew has cooked up for “Rolling!” since Ledger’s massive horse, much more of a moviemaking veteran that its rider, becomes too frisky when it hears the normal warning.

The set hushes.

“Action!” Helgeland howls.

The soundman is attempting to record only the hooves pounding against the areana’s floor, so the extras have been instructed to mine their enthusiasm, as if they were in a Cecil B. DeMille pre-talkie extravaganza. Ledger’s jousting lance breaks against his opponen’ts breastplate right on cue. The extras erupt with silent fervor. “Aaaaannnd … cut!” shouts Helgeland. Ledger trots his horse over to the playback monitor and pries the helmet from his head, Hollywood’s newest visage is revealed, gleaming with seat in the late-afternoon light. Overhearing Addy and Sewell resume their epicurean discussion, Ledger bums a cigarette and offers a recommendation of his own. “And beer here is 20 cents a pint,” he says.

He dismounts and clangs toward the monitor. He carefully studies his jousting technique. A crew member with 40 years’ experience leans in and whispers, “I’ve seen them come and seen them go, and this kid’s own damn movie. It really doesn’t matter how elaborate the set is or how talented the oterh actors are – in every frame the great ones are always starring in their own private film. It’s got nothing to do with being selfish. They just can’t help it.”

Ledger, after a quick final puff, mounts his horse and reins it in for one more take. Before sliding his helmet back on his head, he spots Sossamon in the crowd and flashes her an Errol Flynn.

“Mark, darling!”

He snaps his visor shut.

Only eyes are visible.

“Aaaaannnnd… action!”

Yes, he’s sexy – not traditionally handsome, but there is something there in those eyes of his. They can get incredibly compassionate,” says director Shekhar Kapur, who furnished the third bolt of lighting to srtike Ledger’s nascent career when he cast him as the lead in his long-awaited follow-up to Elizabeth, a remake of Zoltan Korda’s 1939 classic, The Four Feather. Again he will play a young man having to prove his vcalor a young man having to prove his valor in a costume epic when he goes straight from filming A Knight’s Tale to North Africa and England to being work for Kapur. Far-flung sets have become the actor’s home. (“Suitcases,” he replies when asked where he lives.) “You can see that Heath’s a person who understands a bit more about life – and thought a bit more about it – than just being a kid with and interesting face,” says Kapur.

Ledger, his eyes void of compassion as they ponder a passing party boat full of drunk German teenagers, orders a vodka tonic on the terrace of the Kampa Park restaurant on the bank of Prague’s Vltava River. He does up the third button of his suit jacket and turns up his collar. “That’s my idea of hell,” he says, poiting with is half-smoked Camel Light toward the teenagers. When he was 16, he and his closet friend, Trevor DiCarlo (who’s staying with him this summer in Prague), jumped into a car and headed for Sydney from their hometown of Perth. Usally a five-day drive over 2,500 miles of barren landscape, it tooke them three. “I had 69 cents in my bank account. And just enough cash from my folks to get across the country,” he says, covering his lap with one of the tasseled wool blankets the restaurant furnishes for those unaccustomed to the Czech night air. By 19 – with two television series and the Australian art-house hit Two Hands behind him – he had landed in Los Angeles, where he was soon cast as the lead in 10 Things I Hate About You, the 1999 teen movie lossely based on Shakspeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, for which he received a little less than $100,000. Then things slowed down dramatically. He was offered teen movie after teen movie, but he turned them all down. “I want to keep that all my life – the choice to say no,” he says . “I’m in control of my life, not anyone in Hollywood…. I only do this because I’m having fun. The day I stop having fun, I’ll just walk away. I wasn’t going to have fun doing a teen movie again…. I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life. I don’t. I don’t even want to spend the rest of my youth doing this in this industry. There’s so much more I want to discover.”

He was almost forced to make some of those discoveries before he was cast as Gabriel Martin in The Patriot. It had been more than a year since he worked in 10 Things I Hate About You, and he was flat broke. “I was hungry at times. It was my last hope. If I didn’t get the part, I was going to go back home. I had nothing. No money. No nothing….At one point, I didn’t even want to read the script and go in and meet with them. I had come so close to so many great projects that I just had the rub taken out of me. But I went in anyway and read for the director, Roland Emmerich, and the producer, Dean Devlin, and some other people. I had two scenes to read, and was halfway through the second scene and just stopped. I said, ‘I’m sorry. This is shit. I’m waisting your time. But, more importantly I’m waisting mine.’ I was so in the dumps I just didn’t give a shit. I stood up and walked out. But they must have been a little curious about my behavior, because I ended up getting called back.”

It was down to Heath and one other fellow,” says Mel Gibson. (It is rumored that Ryan Phillippe was the second contender.) “At first Roland wanted me to decide but I couldn’t,” Gibson continues. “So I told him that he was the director. He should make the decision, and I would be happy with it. And I was. Heath possesses an unlikely combination: he has incredible presence, yet he has no fucking pretensions. He’s much more grounded than I was at that age, when it all started happening for me. I think he’ll handle it better than I did.”

Robert Rodat, the screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot, has his own take on the dichotomy Gibson is getting at. “We didn’t want the character of Gabriel to be a boy,” he says. “We wanted him to be someone stepping from the dry stone of childhood to the slippery rock of adulthood. We wanted him to be straddling that line.”

“Heath did blow that first audition,” remembers Emmerich, whose directing credits include Independence Day and Godzilla. “But you felt in the room, when he walked in, that everybody was kind of immediately staightening up and saying, ‘Who is this guy?’ … And he has quite an effect on women. Dean and I had a lot of women in our company. There was this thing going on with all the women rooting for Heath. Everyone of them came into my office and said, ‘Please cast Heath!’ I’d go, ‘What’s wrong with you girls? It’s about acting first of all.’ But they were in love with him.” (As his career has taken off, his private life has suffered. Having broken up with his girlfriend, Ledger is now single.)

“It was a very difficult part to cast,” Devlin continues. “We needed someone who could go toe-to toe with Mel Gibson…. On the first day of shooting, Heath was a little shaky. But by the second day he was slugging it out with Mel scene for scene. It was interesting to watch.”

“In order not to hold a frame with someone, you have to be intimidated by them,” says Ledger. “Mel is so easy to be comforable with. That first day we started shooing – It’s weird – I hadn’t been in front of a camera for over a year, and there I was with Mel Gibson…. But he helped me with every scene I did with him. It wasn’t that he sat me down and said, Hey, kid, why don’t you try this or try that. There’s a certain warmth about him. It’s subtexual, how he teaches you. Of course, it all comes down to being willing to be taught.” Ledger looks up at Prague’s moonlit Charles Bridge, its stautes of grim-faced saints with their grimy backs turned to him. He lights another cigarette. “The love story in the film is really between that father and son,” he says.

Heath Andrew Ledger grew up in the racetrack pits of Western Australia. “I was very involded in motor sport and speedway racing,” says his father, 50-year-old Kim Ledger, who now runs an assortment of engineering business in Perth. “Heath was into go-karts for a certain time and won a few go-kart titles. So I was sort of expecting him to take that up. He was really good at field hockey as well. So you get all these pre-determined ideas. I thought he was going to be on the Olympic field-hockey team this year.”

Ledger smiles at his father’s dreams. “When I was growing up, yeah, my dad put a field-hockey stick in my hand,” he says, but adds that in spite of his upbringing he’s never had the slightest interest in what’s uunder the hood of an automobile of any stripe. “I only recently bought my first muscle car,” he says, a bit embarrassed by the purchase. “A 1970 Ford Mustang Grande. This one is full beefcake. Bad-ass black. I saw it and drove it and felt like a man. I also have a Land Rover just to get around in. That’s my lesbian car,” he deadpans. “It’s odd, that’s why I don’t like telling people I played field hockey. It’s real big in Australia for guys. But I say I played in America, and everybody goes, ‘Oh, you girl!’” he says, laughing. “I went to Guildfor Grammar back in Perth. It was kind of like a military school. If you did cadets, you had to wear a uniform. But I didn’t want to fight. I thought it was strange that they were teaching kids to shoot automatic weapons at 16. If you didn’t do that they made you play sports. So I played a lot of field hockey…. And cricket. And Austalian-rules football. But I played them all just to get out of cadets. I mean, who wants to shoot an automatic rifle? What the fuck was I going to use that for?”

“Heath doesn’t wan to squash an ant,” says his father. “He worries about everything from an insect dying onward. He’s very soft inside…. We’re the only father son I know who hug and roll around on the floor of the airport when we meet. We’re crazy, mate. We’re huggy, touchy people.”

Ledger’s father and his mother, Sally, ceased such activity when Heath was 10. “The point I got to very quickly, after my parent’s divorce, was to realize that they were just humans,” he says. “It wasn’t the death of something, but the birth of something else. What I’ve always looked for is redirection of energy and emotion, and maybe the thrust of that started there.” Ledger’s favorite saying is how he likes to “break things down” when life becomes too complicated or painful. That compartmentalization must have started when his family morphed from being a single unit into a happily segmented one. His mother, a sometime French tutor, quickly remarreid after the divorce and had a daughter, Ash-leigh, who is 11. His father has a three-year-old, Olivia, with a longtime girlfriend.

“I think I’ve bred another one, too, out there somewhere,” Kim Ledger says rather sheepishly, then turns his attention back to his son. “Ever played chess with Heath?” he asks. “He’s always five moves ahead of everybody. Though he’s fairly laid-back about things, he’s also pretty streetwise…. He does seem to have a destiny that he’s in charge of. Once I picked him up from his Rock Eisteddfod rehearsal. We wree lying in bed about one o’clock in the morning. Heath is very much into ark also. He’s an arty boy. He had some of his special abstract art pinned on the walls of his room and on the ceiling. We’d been talking for about half an hour. We’d often talk like that. I finally told him – he was about 14 or 15 – he was going to haveto get some sleep because he has school in the morning. He said to me, ‘Well, Dad, you’re going to have to get used to this. Because this is what I’m going to be. I’m going to be very good at it. And I’m really going to enjoy it.’ I’ve always told him, you see, that he couldn’t be good at anythign unless he enjoyed it 150 percent.”

“They never thought I was going to make it here,” says Ledger of America. “I mean, phycially get here. One reason is that the work I did on TV in Australia was crap. My mom and dad were the first to laugh about it.”

“His big break was a show called Sweat,” recalls his father. “It was about young Olympic hopefuls. He had a choice of two roles. One was the swimmer and the other was the gay bicyclist. I was thinking to myself, Yeah, he’ll choose the swimmer! I used to be a swimmer when I was younger. This’ll be great! But then he told me he chose the gay role. I went, ‘Oh God… well, O.K.’ But his response to that was ‘Look, Dad, this is more of an acting role. So if I want to get some sort of recognition, that’s the one I should be doing.’ He wasn’t fazed by any of the other stuff. But his father was a little… in the back of you mind, you sort of think… I mean, well, if Heath ended up gay in his life, I’d still love him as much as I do right now.”

"It wasn't that painfull to leave and head for Sydney," says Ledger. "Not at that age. No matter how good your family life is, you just want out. It's always been like that for me. I've always kept going going going going going.... I'm sure my parents were really conerned, but they were wise enough not to show it to me too much. They knew they were not going to stop me. They knew i was going to go. They're amazing. They really just fucking let me fly!" Ledger breaks into one of those smiles that can fill a scene as easily as one of the best of Tom Cruise's. "My dad loves being a father. He has to be a father, which I love and hate. I guess it started when I left home, but our relationship went from being best friends. I guess that comes from understanding him as an adult now that I'm an adult. It's amazing when you come to accept each other's mistakes and let each other make them." He shakes his head. "It's amazing," he says quietly.

"Heath took off at a very early age," says Kim Ledger, just as quietly. "He's barely been home since then. It broke my heart. We spent our life together playing sports. I'd run him around to this and that. You participate [as a parent] in everything they do. So when they take off, it's like ... well ... it's like a divorce .... But I've always been a person who believes that people who break kids' spirits should be jailed. It should be a capital offense. We all have our individual spirits."

Rock Eisteddfod?

"It's a nationwide high-school competition," says Ledger. "It's a dance thing. You get about 60 or 80 students. You have to create an eight-minute dance piece to a topic you've picked. You have to create your own set and costumes. And you've got a month or two to do it. Usally a lot of girls' schools do it. We were the fist all-guys school to ever do it. Our topic was fashion," he says with an actory aplomb that could send his leading lady reeling. "It was pretty cheesy. But we won the competition. I choreographed the whoole thing. Sixty male students - all farmers at a military school- who had never danced before. We were doing it just to get out of school and go to the competition so we could meet all those girls. We wnet through all the different aspects of fashion. It was cool, man. These kids had never danced before and didn't think they could do it. I remember the first meeitng we had. All of them were kind of surly, going, 'Fuck this. I'm not gonna dance.' I had to literally get up in front of all these surly guys and put on a song and just dance. By the end, when they won the competition, they were fucking blown away by it. For starters, that they could simply win something, but also that they could dance. I guess it was like a Gene Kelly movie. Like Summer Stock."

You might thing that Ledger's cinematic hero would be Steve McQueen or Paul Newman or Marlon Brando or James Dean. "No, it all comes from my love of Kelly, I think he's just awesome. It was more or less the partnership between him and Judy Garland that I liked. He nurtured her and had her under his arm," he says, miming having a phantom Garland in a gentle headlock. He pats her invisible head. "I really liked that. There was somthing so magical about Gene Kelly's films. It was moviemaking! They built those amazing sets! They danced and sang!" He pauses, trying to decide wether he should admit something or not. "Actually, I have a pair of tap-dancing shoes," he says. "I was living on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village for about six months, and one day i went to Capezio's and bought myself some shoes. I haven't had a lesson yet. Like everything else, I'm self taught. I do it by myself in my apartment." Lighting his last cigarette, he has to laugh at the image of himself privately step-ball-changing in front of his mirror. "God! Doesn't that sound lonely?" he asks, taking a long slow drag.

Ledger has never bothered with acting lessons, either. "I don't have a method to my madness.... For me, acting is more about self-exploration. I've learned a lot about myself in order to learn about the craft. How many kings can you find to play a king? You can't find them. When I act, I look at it as if I'm a mixing board in a sound studio. The patter on the board is me. When i play a character, I go, 'I'll turn these knobs down and these ones up.' But in order to do that i have to know myself. I have to know myself like an instrument. I'm just a saxophone," he says, shrugging. "I've always been very big on self-exploration and answering my own questions. For so many, it's hell growing up. But I guess I'm blessed. I've really enjoyed it. I don't let a lot get to me. I really don't. As I keep saying, I break everything down. Everything. I look up at those stars," he says, pointing at the sky about the Vltava River, "and go, 'There's no explanation for us to be here.' When anything is blocking my head or there's worry in my life, I just - whoosh - go sit on Mars or something and look back here at Earth. All you can see is this tiny speck. You don't see the fear. You don't see the pain. You don't see the movie industry. You don't see this interview. You don't see thought. It's just one solid speck. Then nothing really matters. It just doesn't."

'Aaaannnd ... cut!"

Ledger pulls off his helmet and hands it to the costume assistant. Scowling, he trudges over to the playback monitor to watch the sword fight hei character, Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein, has just won. Richard Greatrex, A Knights Tale's director of photography, whose credits include Mrs. Brown and Shakespeare in Love, readies his crew for the fights next take. "I met Heath once before. I'd shot his sceen test for a Miramax film called Calcio, which is the Italian word for football. It was about an English football fan who ends up in Sardinia. The film got canceled at the last minute because Harvey Weinstein [Miramax's co-chairman] didn't like Heath. The director and Harvey had quite a disagreement about him, and the thing fell apart only a week before we were to start shooting. I think Harvey must be kicking himself now, considering all the buzz about the boy." (Weinstein, through a spokesman, claims that he doesn't recall such a film.) In fact, Miramax, along with Paramount, is producing Ledger's next vehicle, The Four Feathers. Ledger, for his part, refuse to answer - but does smile knowingly - when he's asked if he "stuck it to Weinstien" during the salary negotiations for The Four Feathers, considering the producer' past failure to appreciate his talent. (Sources say Ledger will cross the $2 million threshold)

Greatrex continues:"I spoke to director Gillian Armstrong just before I came to Prague, and she was raving about Heath... He certainly knows his way around the set. He knows where his body lies in the space very well. He understands the 3-D-ness of movie acting. He's very skilled at that." A giant shadow falls ominously across the sword-fight ring. "Oh, God! Look at those dark clouds rolling up."

Ledger emerges from the tent where the playback monitor is now stationed. He is still scowling. The costume assistant attempts to loosent a bit of the armor on his biceps, for he is getting badly bruised with each two-handed swing of his sword. "I wasn't graceful enough," he growls, addressing what he just saw on the monitoy. "Any fool can fight. I have to find a way to be more graceful." He is abel to dismiss the hovering assitstant by quietly thanking her. Groaning at the weight of his armor, he slips his helmet back on. Once again he lifts his sword, ready for another morning of dolly shots and shouting extras and a close-up or two of his angry eyes, grouted beneath his visor.

By lunch the swordplay is finised. Perspiring heavily, Ledger removed his armor and shirt until he is wearing only his leath leggings. He puts a Janis Joplin CD into his boom box. On a hillside next to his trailer, he attempts to stretch his sore body to Joplin's singing. (The day before, in a better mood, he stretched to the soothing tones of Tracy Chapman.) Finally sitting down to a plate of meat loaf and potates- his curls blowing in the rising wind- he's asked if Heath is a shortened version of Heathcliff. "No, just Heath. But I do have an older sister named Kathy," he says. "Well, Kate."

There is a thunderclap, and a downpour erupts. The cast and crew head for cover. Their star stays put. He slips Joplin from the boom box and slides the Doors in. "Riders on the Storm" begins its own distant rumble. Ledger turns his face to the rain and heads up the hill. The Czech sky is roiling. "Into this world we're thrown." The stones have become slippery. Ledger picks up a few and heaves them toward the heavens. Ray Manzarek;s keyboard gets his feet tapping. A rock 'n' roll Gene Kelly, he's found the grace he misplaced this morning and, grinning from ear to ear, stomps about in one puddle after another. Lighting flashes. He ignores it and keeps dancing.

Heath Ledger On the Brink

The Patriot is making him a Hero, but he’d rather ride horses, snap photos or hang with his family.

Fireworks explode red, white and blue in the night sky, marching band music fills the air between booms, and the smell of gunpowder is everywhere. Though the smoke, a lone man appears… carrying a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Heath Ledger, Australian-born and –bred, stands amid the throngs in Los Angeles for the world premiere of The Patriot – the Revolutionary War drama that opened June 30, in which he costars as Mel Gibson’s son – experiencing a kind of pure American moment particular to this corner of the country some 224 years after the U.S. won its independence. Within minutes, the hunky 21-year-old actor, who has burst upon the Hollywood scene with his first role in an American blockbuster, will be offered an open invitation to the Playboy Mansion, congratulated by Cher and kissed by fellow emerging stars Robin Tunney (The Vertical Limit). You would expect him to show of excitement, but Ledger seems to be unmoved. “Pretty Boring,” he says. Then he smiles. “Just joking.”

These days, fanfare is following the solidly built, six-foot-one, blond-haired Ledger wherever he goes. He has received rave reviews for his performance as the eager young revolutionary, landed on the cover of Vanity Fair and inspired a rabid Internet fan base. His Patriot director , Roland Emmerich, speaks excitedly about Ledger’s good old-fashioned movie-star potential. “There were some shots,” he says, “some close-ups, where I said, ‘Wow, there is magic going on.’” And Ledger’s Patriot love interest, Lisa Brenner, almost blushes at the mention of his name; “He’s a total heartthrob.”

To this semiformal occasion, Ledger, a hot as a Roman candle, as cool as a cucumber, wears a leather motorcycle jacket, a T-shirt, jeans and Gucci sneakers (“freebies,” he explains). He’s casual but careful about what he says – you won’t hear him complaining about the trials of bouncing back and forth between Europe and the States while shooting A Knights Tale with director Brian Helgeland in Prague and promoting The Patriot in L.A. and New York. Nor will you hear him whine about the difficulties of growing up with divorced parents and setting out on his own at age 16. “It’s basically just so human,” says Ledger of his parents’ split.