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. “I’ve dumped out with my girlfriends in the past. Same deal, bigger scale.”
He’s also none to confessional about his love life. Though he was living in New York with model Christina Cauchi earlier this year, all he’ll say of her whereabouts at the premiere is “She’s not here.” Are they still together? “She’s not here.” End of subject.
Ledger and his older sister, Kate (they were named for Wuthering Heights’ Catherine and Heathcliff), were raised by mother Sally, a homemaker, and father Kim, an auto racer and mining engineer, in the bucolic city of Perth, where young Heath played Australian-rules football, hockey, rugby, cricket and tennis. “always, always, always gave me trouble,” Kim says with a smile, adding that his son always showed self-confidence “no matter what he did.”
Ledger was 10 when his parents divorced, and though he says the split didn’t affect him, it was around that time that he found second home on the stage, playing the title role in a local theater production of Peter Pan. He was smitten. “I just loved it,” he says, “and kept doing it. I blinked my eyes and I was getting paid. Doors kept opening and I kept walking through them.
When he wasn’t running into them, that is. On the set of The Patriot, which required skill with knives and authentic flintlock muskets, Ledger, who admits he’s “hopelessly clumsy,” had an accident that necessitated his getting his first stitches. “On the flintlock, I pulled it back and ripped this open,” says Ledger, showing off a scar on his right pinkie. “I was a hero, screaming like a girl.” He displays even more scabs and bruises from the ongoing four-month shoot of A Knight’s Tale, for which he’s been donning armor, riding horses and jousting,” another wacky skill that I’ve picked up.” The ninth-century buildings of Prague provide ample inspiration – along with cheap beer- for his other passion, photography. “Just can’t stoop shooting in Prague,” he says; he’s been burning as many as 20 rolls of film a week there.
His avowed clumsiness aside, physically demanding roles are nothing new for the actor, who debuted in the movies as a surfer in the 1997 Australian teen drama Blackrock. Ledger landed the surfer movie quickly after he finished high school – a year earlier – and, at age 16 in 1995, drove across Australia with his best friend, Trevor, to seek fame and fortune in Sydney. “It was really about exploring life,” says Ledger. “I just wanted to get on that train that was flying part at 90 miles an hour. And my job was an excuse to get out and just do that. I didn’t think that I was going to be ending up there.
Ledger then scored a leading role in the 1997 FOX TV series Roar (costarring a pre-Felicity Keri Russell), and though it was short-lived, it encouraged him to take another great leap. He moved to Los Angeles, where he spent several months making the rounds before getting a role in the gangster thriller Two Hands (1999), which, ironically, brought him back to Australia. Then came the part of tough-but-tender Patrick Verona in 1999’s Ten Things I Hate About You, with Julia Stiles. Forsaking a quick buck, Ledger turned down work “for over a year” afterward, he says, waiting for a role that interested him. Not that he was very confident something would come along: “Not at all! I would rather do nothing than do something I was unhappy with. I would do a bad job.”
To clear his head, he would drive his 1970 Mustang or hear to a horse ranch in the hills of L.A., close to the famous HOLLYWOOD sign, where a friend worked. “We’d do out there, jump on the horses and ride through night,” he says.
Then cam the audition for The Patriot, which he walked out of. “I was doing a really bad reading, so I said ‘I am extremely sorry and embarrassed about doing a lousy job, and I’ve got to get out of here.’” His amazed reaction when they called him back was a one-expletive exclamation. “We tested a lot of people,” says director Emmerich, “and when Heath came along, he had the same manly quality Mel Gibson had as a young man. They’re never really boys; they already have it.”
Ledger raves about the elder Aussie, though he admits he was initially in awe of Gibson. “I was very nervous,” he says, “because he was the guy I always looked up to. He was Mad Max! Working with Mel really opened up a lot inside of me, in terms of discovering how to relax in your working environment, keeping your head clear.” The admiration is almost impossibly mutual. “Hey, I’d let him even take my daughter out to dinner,” says Gibson, the protective father of seven. “And that’s weird, huh? No tomahawks involved.”
That chemsitry proved itself onscreen. “He really sparked to life when he got with Mel,” says Patriot producer Dean Devlin. “There was a real connection. I think that his reverence toward Mel was very similar to the feeling a son has for a father.” Says screenwriter Robert Rodat. “They had to same physical mannerisms. And the way they worked with each other, they really felt like father and son.:
But for all the furor surrounding his Patriot role, Ledger continues to live a relatively low-key life. He recently bought a pair of tap shoes “just for fun,” reads biographies, listens to everything from Led Zeppelin to Beck, is learning to play Doors songs on the guitar and still gets in the saddle for fun. “Yeah, I’m quite the jockey now,” he says with a laugh. He frequently calls his mother and father, both of whom still live in Perth and were with him at the premiere. He speaks fondly of the daughters (11-year old Ashleigh, from Sally and stepfather Roger Bell, and Olivia, 3, from Kim and his girlfriend, Emma Brown) each has added to the brood. “All adorable,” Ledger says, beaming. “My dad is, like, my best mate.”
As ashes from the fireworks continue to fall on the assembled party crowd, Ledger catches his breath for a second. “This is all very weird,” he says, leaning an elbow on a table, his head in his hand. “I don’t take a lot of this all that seriously.”
-Eric Gladstone
July 24, 2000
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