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 Heath
Ledger
Apr. 4, 1979- Actor
Biography from Current Biography (2006)
Copyright (c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.
"I don't really like to do the same
thing twice," Heath Ledger explained to Rachel Abramowitz for the
Los Angeles Times (November 20, 2005). "I like to do something I
fear. I like to set up obstacles and defeat them." After attracting
attention as a young hunk in the teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About
You (1999), the Australian actor resisted the attempts of Hollywood
to capitalize on his youthful good looks by casting him in similar
lighthearted fare; he passed up several scripts before taking a role
in the grisly war drama The Patriot (2000), about the American
Revolution. That high-profile film, and Ledger's subsequent leading
role in A Knight's Tale (2001), propelled him into the spotlight; he
appeared on the covers of glossy magazines and was named one of
People magazine's 50 most beautiful people of the year (2001).
Uncomfortable with the limelight and afraid of being typecast,
Ledger sought out what seemed to be unusual or challenging films; he
took a supporting role in Monster's Ball (2001) and starred in The
Four Feathers (2002), The Order (2003), and Ned Kelly (2003). With
the exception of Monster's Ball, most of his films flopped. In an
interview with Andy Dougan for the Glasgow Herald (December 24,
2005), Ledger explained, "In a way I was spoon-fed a career. It was
fully manufactured by a studio that believed it could put me on
their posters and turn me into a product. . . . I hadn't figured out
properly how to act, and all of a sudden I was being thrown into
these lead roles." In 2005 Ledger appeared in several films,
including Lords of Dogtown, The Brothers Grimm, and Casanova--and
though most of those fared little better than his previous films,
Ledger again found himself the center of media attention, following
his acclaimed performance in Brokeback Mountain, a drama about two
cowboys who carry on a furtive homosexual relationship. Directed by
Ang Lee and co-starring Jake Gyllenhaal, the film impressed critics
and audiences alike, earning Ledger an Academy Award nomination for
best actor. "I hope I will always be learning the craft," Ledger
told Dougan, adding that until recently, "I felt that the choices
were being made for me, so I feel this has been my time now to find
the good stories and test myself. . . . It has been an interesting
year, where I finally have a sense of accomplishment.
Heathcliff Andrew Ledger was born on
April 4, 1979 to Sally Ledger, a French teacher, and Kim Ledger, an
engineer. Named after the main characters of Emily Bronte's
Wuthering Heights, Ledger and his older sister, Katherine, grew up
in Perth, in Western Australia, where Ledger attended Guildford
Grammar, a private boys' school. His parents divorced when their son
was about 10 years old, and for the next few years he divided his
time between them. (Both parents found new partners and each had
another daughter.) At about the same time, at his sister's urging,
Ledger joined a local theater company and appeared in a production
of Peter Pan, which led to his being cast in children's television
programs. Ledger appeared in the 1992 film Clowning Around and the
1993 TV series Ship to Shore before deciding to pursue acting as a
profession. He had been involved in numerous sports and other
activities: he was the state junior chess champion at age 10 and a
junior go-kart racing champion, played hockey for the state team,
and dabbled in cricket. However, when his hockey coach issued an
ultimatum, forcing Ledger to choose between drama and hockey, he
stuck with the former. "Heath is extremely dedicated and follows his
passions," his father recalled to Maree Curtis for the Sydney Sunday
Telegraph (June 11, 2000). "I picked him up late one night after a
rehearsal. He was about 13, and we were lying on his bed looking at
the stars [stuck] on his ceiling and he said, 'I'm going to have to
get used to these late nights. I'm going to do really well in this
industry. I love it.' I knew he meant it. If Heath said he was going
to do something, we knew he would."
When he was 16 years old, Ledger drove across the Australian
continent to Sydney, where he believed he would find more acting
opportunities. He landed the role of a gay cyclist in the
short-lived TV series Sweat (1996), found small parts in the films
Paws and Blackrock (both 1997), and did a brief stint on the
long-running soap opera Home and Away (1997). His largest role was
that of Conor, a Celtic warrior, in the medieval fantasy TV series
Roar (1997), but that project did not last long. "It was shot
beautifully, and the script was half decent. But by the fifth
episode the ratings weren't going well, and all of a sudden sea
sprites in bikinis were popping up," Ledger explained to Jeff Giles
and Suzanne Smalley for Newsweek (July 10, 2000). After the show was
canceled, Ledger moved to Los Angeles, California. "I went over
there with no expectations and all the confidence of youth," he told
Curtis. "I never let anything faze me or anyone look down on me."
His next film, Two Hands (1999), necessitated a brief return to
Australia. Although the movie, in which he played an amiable but
bumbling strip-club bouncer and aspiring gangster, received little
exposure outside Australia, film-industry insiders took notice of
his compelling performance when the movie was screened at the 1999
Sundance Film Festival. The Australian Film Institute (AFI)
nominated Ledger for a best-actor award
Ledger's first American film was 10
Things I Hate About You, which Peter Ross described for Scotland's
Sunday Herald (July 9, 2000) as "an above-par teen flick based on
Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew." A lightweight comedy, it won
praise for its two leading actors, Ledger and Julia Stiles. In the
Atlanta (Georgia) Journal-Constitution (October 14, 1999), Steve
Murray called the pair "captivating," adding, "[Ledger is] equally
comfortable playing a dangerous loner or doing a goofy song and
dance to impress [Stiles's character]." Following the success of 10
Things I Hate About You, Ledger was offered numerous similar roles
in the teen-heartthrob vein, but he turned them all down in an
effort to avoid getting pigeonholed.
Nearly a year passed before Ledger found
a script that appealed to him. During that period he was so poor
that he was forced to borrow money from his agent, and often he
could not afford to eat. "I was literally living off ramen noodles
and water, because I was sticking to my guns," he told Rupert Mellor
for the London Evening Standard (July 25, 2001). "I'm happy without
money, I never did have it, so that was no big deal. And it was fun
saying no--because they really don't like to hear that word in
Hollywood." Eventually he earned an audition for The Patriot (2000),
starring Mel Gibson and directed by Roland Emmerich. He prepared two
scenes to perform for the filmmakers but flubbed the audition.
"Halfway through the second scene, I stood up and left," he told
Giles and Smalley. "I said, 'I'm awfully sorry and I'm awfully
embarrassed, but I'm wasting your time. I'm going to get up right
now, and I'm going to walk out that door. Thanks for your time, but
I'm giving you a bad reading. Catch you later.'" Yet Ledger made an
impression, for when his agent requested a second audition, the
filmmakers agreed. That time, Ledger excelled and was promptly cast
as the son of the character played by Gibson. Although the movie
garnered mixed reviews (many found it overlong and historically
inaccurate), the young actor received raves. "[Ledger] comes of age
as an actor, smouldering on screen as Gibson's eldest son Gabriel
who goes off to war against the wishes of his anxious parent," Peter
Ross wrote. "Shame, pride, rage, courage, pain--he emotes up a
storm."
Ledger, who found himself dubbed "the
next Russell Crowe" (the Australian star of the 2000 blockbuster
Gladiator), was tapped to star in A Knight's Tale, playing the part
of a squire who disguises himself as a nobleman in order to joust.
"[The film] imagines that the medieval tournament sport of jousting
was the World Wrestling Federation of its day, where superheroes and
supervillains faced off in arenas surrounded by fanatical supporters
and intense hype," Kirk Honeycutt observed for the Hollywood
Reporter (April 19, 2001, on-line). Directed by Brian Helgeland, the
film debuted at the number-two spot on the box-office charts and
spent five weeks in the top-10 list. Critics largely panned the
film, though some praised it as playful and spirited. Despite the
film's being "more or less a cartoon" and "too long," Nicholas
Barber wrote for the London Independent on Sunday (September 2,
2001), "it's terrific, innocent, old-fashioned entertainment."
"Ledger has a strong masculine screen presence that allows him to
dive bravely into a scene's emotions," Honeycutt opined. Ledger,
however, was uncomfortable with his emerging stardom. "When I saw
the poster for the movie [which features a portrait of a
resolute-looking Ledger], I was pretty freaked," he told Rupert
Mellor. "The film is an ensemble piece, and there's just my great,
big mug. I'm just doing what I've always done--being an actor. Now
I'm being made into a 'star', a product, and it's out of my
control."
Unsurprisingly, given his feelings, Ledger was very interested when
a supporting role in Monster's Ball, a drama starring Halle Berry
and Billy Bob Thornton, became available. Ledger's part, that of the
prison guard Sonny--the deeply troubled son of the character played
by Thornton--was originally to be played by the actor Wes Bentley,
who had appeared in American Beauty (1999); when Bentley had to pull
out of the project, he reportedly asked Ledger, a friend, to take
over for him so as to avoid delaying the production. That
development proved to be serendipitous for Ledger, as the role
displayed his talent as a serious actor capable of complexity. "A
fable of absolution and redemption, Monster's Ball is a dauntingly
ambitious work," Kevin Thomas wrote in a review for the Los Angeles
Times (December 26, 2001). "Ledger expresses the torment of the
conflicted Sonny perfectly; it was a smart move for an actor whose
star is ascending so swiftly to commit to a supporting role in so
venturesome a project as this."
Ledger's next part was in the
much-anticipated 2002 film The Four Feathers (the fifth version of
A. E. W. Mason's 1902 novel), in which he played a conflicted
Victorian-era British soldier who resigns from the army as it
prepares to do battle in the Sudan. The film, directed by Shekhar
Kapur (who had earned high praise for his 1998 film Elizabeth),
disappointed the critics. Although Ledger "broods prettily and holds
your attention during the crowd scenes," the film as a whole "is
still as moth-eaten as a Bengal tiger rug on the floor of a London
men's club," Ty Burr wrote for the Boston Globe (September 20,
2002). Ledger's subsequent films--Ned Kelly, in which he starred as
a legendary Irish-Australian outlaw, and The Order, a religious
thriller--were trounced by critics and generally ignored by
moviegoers.
In 2005 Ledger appeared in Lords of
Dogtown, a dramatization of the story of the Zephyr Team (also known
as Z-Boys), a group of talented skateboarders living in and around
Venice, California, in the 1970s. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke,
the film was based on a script by Stacy Peralta, who had covered the
same material in the noted documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, which had
premiered in 2001. In Hardwicke's telling, Ledger played Skip
Engblom, a surf-shop owner who serves as an unlikely mentor to the
pioneering teens. "Engblom is crass, excessive, decadent and a
control freak. But he is fun," Regina Campbell wrote for the Daily
Yomiuri (December 8, 2005), a Japanese newspaper. "Ledger dominates
the screen in each of his scenes, and through his take on the
well-meaning but rough-and-ready character, the audience comes to
understand that Engblom may be tough, but he cares." "Played by
Heath Ledger in what seems to be a demented tribute to Val Kilmer's
performance in The Doors, Skip is always volatile, frequently drunk
and consistently the most entertaining figure in this movie," A. O.
Scott wrote for the New York Times (June 3, 2005). "Which is saying
something, since Lords of Dogtown, from start to finish, is pretty
much a blast."
In The Brothers Grimm (2005), Ledger
starred alongside Matt Damon in a fictional portrayal of the German
folktale writers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Directed by Terry Gilliam,
the film reimagines the brothers as a pair of con men who stage
hauntings, then pretend to vanquish the other-worldly creatures--for
a fee. Complications arise when the brothers are called upon to
solve the disappearance of a village's children, leading them on a
quest involving an enchanted forest and an evil queen. The
big-budget film generally failed to impress. "Despite a few early
sparks of promise," Manohla Dargis wrote for the New York Times
(August 26, 2005) in a representative review, "The Brothers Grimm
sputters and coughs along like an unoiled machine, grinding gears
and nerves in equal measure." The lead actors, however, earned a
degree of praise. "Damon and Ledger give game and wry performances,"
Michael Phillips wrote for the Chicago Tribune (August 26, 2005),
"Ledger twitching his way through the twittier role with a touch of
wit." Likewise, a review in the U.K. paper the Express (November 4,
2005) applauded the "real charm and energy in the performances of
Matt Damon and Heath Ledger who both display a fine talent for
comedy."
Brokeback Mountain was released in
December 2005. The movie follows the difficult lives of two young
ranch hands, Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal), who
meet in Wyoming in 1963; looking for work, they are assigned to
spend the summer together in an isolated mountain range, keeping
watch over sheep. Del Mar is tight-lipped and emotionally reserved;
Twist is talkative and outgoing. As the days go by they come to
enjoy each other's company, until one night, huddling for warmth in
a tent, they succumb to an unexpected mutual attraction and fall in
love. When their jobs end abruptly, they are forced to move on with
their lives; they marry women and become fathers, but they cannot
forget about their time together. Four years later they meet again,
and their passion is reignited, but Del Mar is haunted by an
incident from his past that prevents him from accepting his
relationship with Twist.
Based on a 1997 short story by E. Annie
Proulx, Brokeback Mountain was a project that remained in limbo for
years; the homosexual love story was deemed commercially risky, and
the making of the film was repeatedly postponed until Ang Lee signed
on to direct. Impressed by Ledger's performance in Monster's Ball,
Lee offered him the part of Del Mar. "When I met [Ledger], the
moment I saw him, that was it," Lee told Rachel Abramowitz. "He's
the person that's the best to carry that western brooding
mood--elegiac and fearful and violent, all the complexities, all the
poetic qualities." But the actor was initially unsure about the
project. "There was this kind of industry-manufactured fear and risk
factor that was surrounding the script," Ledger told Steven Rea for
Knight Ridder, as reprinted in the Bradenton (Florida) Herald
(January 8, 2006). He had read Proulx's story and the screenplay
adaptation, by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and found both
deeply moving. "I truly had a lump in my throat, but . . . these
manufactured fears started to bleed into my response to the
script--'Oh, this is risky,' that sort of thing," he explained. "But
then that just started to fade away and I thought . . . 'What
exactly am I risking?' I didn't feel like I had a career to risk,
and I'm a little ruthless about it anyway. If it went away based
upon a creative choice I made, then it's not really an industry I
want to be in."
The film solicited widespread praise
from critics. "An achingly sad tale of two damaged souls whose
intimate connection across many years cannot ever be resolved, this
ostensible gay Western is marked by a heightened degree of
sensitivity and tact, as well as an outstanding performance from
Heath Ledger," Todd McCarthy wrote for Variety (September 3, 2005,
on-line). "As Del Mar, Ledger emits the kind of loneliness that
seeps into your bones like the dampness of a bad winter cold,"
Rachel Abramowitz wrote. "He's unvarnished, understated and stoic,
fiercely determined to keep his longing and fury and grief pent up
for the rest of his life." Proulx herself concurred, telling Howard
Feinstein for the London Guardian (January 6, 2006): "Ledger erased
the image I had when I wrote [the story]. He was so visceral. How
did this actor get inside my head so well? He understood more about
the character than I did." "Heath is very meticulous," Lee explained
to Feinstein. "I don't advise actors to come to the monitor to watch
themselves, but he's the only exception I made. He gets better as he
gets more self-conscious. He sets himself in a zone and believes in
it and keeps refining it. Jake [Gyllenhaal] sets himself this way
and that way, he tries everything, like [Robert] De Niro. Heath is
not like that. He has a specific target within him."
Ledger was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best actor, and
the film won Golden Globes for best dramatic picture, best director,
best screenplay, and best original song. The film led the Academy
Awards with eight nominations, of which it won three, for best
director, best adapted screenplay, and best score. (Ledger was also
nominated for an Oscar for best actor; the award went to Philip
Seymour Hoffman for his role in Capote.) The film performed well at
the box office, though some religious groups urged a boycott due to
the homosexual content. "I think people should see it before they
make any judgment on it," Ledger told Des Partridge for the
Queensland, Australia, Courier Mail (January 14, 2006). "It seems a
shame they put so much energy into expressing their disgust and
their negative views about it when it is a story about people who
love each other." He continued, "They may not agree with the subject
matter, but there are worse things in life than love. They should
demonstrate about the amount of anger and violence [in films]
perhaps."
Casanova, in which Ledger played the
title character, was also released in late 2005. A comedic love
story directed by Lasse Hallstrom, it garnered mostly derisory
reviews, although Ledger was again singled out for praise. "I admit
that the picture is handsomely designed in gold and pale blue, but
none of the tumult and pomp have any dramatic, comic, or erotic
effect whatsoever," David Denby commented in the New Yorker (January
9, 2006). "Yet there is humor in Heath Ledger's performance. After
his powerful work in Brokeback Mountain, in which he plays a man all
tied up inside himself, it was fun to see him leaping out of bedroom
windows and prancing around, sword in hand. His Casanova is
seductive yet reserved, and Ledger's extraordinary baritone voice,
which registers clearly at the lowest volume, may be the best asset
any actor has had in years." In the Baltimore Sun (January 6, 2006),
Michael Sragow described the picture as "refreshingly uninhibited"
and full of subplots "like sumptuous chutes and ladders that turn
the canalworks of Venice into a romantic slip'n'slide." Sragow
concluded, "Ledger has never been so charming."
In 2006 Ledger appeared with Abby
Cornish and Geoffrey Rush in the Australian film Candy, directed by
Neil Armfield, about a poet who falls in love with an artist and, at
her insistence, introduces her to heroin, to which he has become
addicted. "Heath has this incredible ability to maintain a sort of
guileless charm, despite the fact [that] this character is
ultimately selfish and makes so many mistakes," Armfield, who is
among his nation's preeminent theater directors, told Clint Morris
for webwombat.com in early 2006. "He just has this beautifully
focused concentration." Ledger's upcoming projects include the film
I'm Not There, scheduled for release in 2007, in which he will
portray the singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, and the next Batman film,
The Dark Knight, expected to premiere in 2008, in which he will
appear in the role of the Joker.
Ledger found real-life romance on the
set of Brokeback Mountain with Michelle Williams, who played his
on-screen wife, Alma, and also has a role in I'm Not There. The two
are engaged and in 2005 became the parents of a child, named Matilda
Rose. The family live in a brownstone in the New York City borough
of Brooklyn. "That's where Michelle is happiest, and I think it's
important that we rear our daughter . . . where the mother is
happiest," Ledger told Partridge.
Suggested Reading: (Glasgow) Herald p14
Dec. 24, 2005; (London) Guardian p3 Jan. 6, 2006; Los Angeles Times
E p1 Nov. 20, 2005; (Queensland, Australia) Courier Mail M p1 Jan.
14, 2006
Selected Films: Two Hands, 1999; 10
Things I Hate About You, 1999; The Patriot, 2000; A Knight's Tale,
2001; Monster's Ball, 2001; The Four Feathers, 2002; Ned Kelly,
2003; The Order, 2003; Lords of Dogtown, 2005; The Brothers Grimm,
2005; Brokeback Mountain, 2005; Casanova, 2005; Candy, 2006
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