Heath Ledger is sprawled on the back steps of his father Kim's Federation-style home in Perth. It's his first decent stay in three years and the lanky blonde actor, now a resident of Los Angeles, is enjoying a quintessential Australian homecoming; a Joey rescued by Kim after its mother was hit by a car is bounding about on the grass. "It's so great", he says with a chuckle. "When I go back to the States and people say, 'So, you got a pet kangaroo?' I can finally say, 'As a matter of fact, I do'."
He can bank on fielding plenty of questions back in the US: last week, the unassuming 20-year-old was anointed by Entertainment Weekly as one of Hollywood's "It Bunch," five hot up-and-comers. Perhaps his destiny was preordained when his mother, Sally, named him after Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights' brooding hero. "He's not one to ham it up," muses Sally (who is divorced from Kim). "But he always puts his whole self into whatever he does."
In 1996, with eight years of amateur theatre behind him, Ledger left Guildford Grammar to star in the Perth drama series Sweat, which had a five-month run on Network Ten. Although he reckons he was "hopeless", he wanted so badly to be an actor that, at just 17, he packed his life into his Mazda and headed across the Nullarbor. In Sydney, he stayed with Sweat co-star Martin Henderson and landed bit parts in Home and Away and the film Blackrock before auditioning for the US-produced fantasy series Roar. Ledger won the part of swordsman Conor and though it lasted just 13 episodes, it was enough to get him noticed in Hollywood. On an agent's advice, he moved there in '97 and beat 200 hopefuls to snag the lead in 10 Things I Hate About You (Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew writ modern.) Next month sees the opening of Two Hands, co-starring Bryan Brown, and he'll also play Mel Gibson's son in an American Revolution epic, The Patriot. "I suppose it's luck but I had to go out there and get luck," he shrugs. "No-one knocks on your door."
Now the doors are swinging wide for Ledger. "He just has that charismatic star quality," explains 10 Things director Gil Junger. "I said to him, 'Heath, you're going to be a movie star after this.' And he said, 'Well, let's just take each project as it comes and hope I get another one.' " Ledger ("a free agent" romance-wise after splitting with Roar's Lisa Zane, sister of actor Billy) affirms: "It's stuff that might happen and might not happen, so as far as I'm concerned it's a waste of my time and my energy to ponder it."
His LA friend and 10 Things co-star Andrew Keegan says Ledger shook up Hollywood when he "stole" the 10 Things role from under their nose: "It's wonderful. He's like the outsider, the underdog. You've got to root for him because he's the guy from Australia."
And he's even got the roo to prove it.
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