|
|
HEATH LEDGER
- A CHIP OFF THE OLD ISLAND-CONTINENT
by MP
Heath Ledger is a rare species of actor. Somehow he manages to maintain a distance from classical theatrical training, an overactive cynicism about the industry within which he works, and an intense devotion to his much-loved "craft". So how did this particular bundle of contradictions find his way into an epic American Revolution movie? Yap asked him.
John Howard - the less than apologetic one – would like Heath Ledger. Don't hold that against him though, it's not his fault. It's just that Ledger applies himself to acting, as less your spoiled drama student, and more your hard-working apprentice. He understands the value of drama schools, but is much more interested in on-the-job training. And at only twenty-one, his eleven-year history at such work is more than a little impressive.
Almost as soon as he enrolled in a Perth-based theatre company at the age of ten, Ledger began getting work on Australian television. It's not hard to understand why - even at his age he's got not so much your boy-next-door, as your kid-down-the-street sort of face.
Talking to Ledger now, however, he doesn't seem to miss the genre that first gave him a break. While suffering the inevitable questions about his move to Los Angeles three years ago, he doesn't hesitate for a second.
“There wasn't that much work for me over here. And if there was, I was getting cast as the blonde kid down the road, and that was boring, so I broke out of that. Also, I didn't want to get stuck in the television world over here, because you do. They build you up, and chop you down, and they love to do it, and they love to laugh at it.”
Ledger is very straight-forward about this issue, managing to maintain an affable tone while pulling no punches at all. And seemingly the attitude isn't contained within the topic of Australian television. At the mention of rumours that he was to appear as a guest on America's Buffy, his language suddenly gets harsher, but his manner is still very quiet and friendly.
“I don't know where the fuck that came from. I've been reading that somewhere, about Buffy's boyfriend or something. Fucked if I know, and fucked if I'm going on that show.”
Yet, if this attitude seems a little severe, it's certainly not because of a consistently cynical nature. Mention the words“New York”– the place to which he has recently relocated, and he starts to talk like a school kid who's just discovered Old Sydney Town.
“I love it. It's awsome. You can do anything, anytime – 24 hours you've got live music downstairs, you've got restaurants, you've got anything and just the whole vibe of the city, it's electric.”
And while it may seem perfectly normal for such a fella to think these things about New York, maybe Los Angeles, his home for nearly three years previously, would get a different reaction? Not at all, any misgivings he has on that topic are aimed only at people who bag the place.
“So many people bitch on about it, and it's so easy to fucking rip apart and say it's pretentious and it's this and it's that. But so is our industry over here you know. I mean, we have those actors and those producers and shit who are all like that – it's just magnified in L.A.
“But L.A.'s cruisy, it's all about driving your car, and your life in your car, but it's cool. You know, because two hours one way you've got the desert, and two hours the other way you've got the ski hills, and half an hour the other way you have the ocean. So there's plenty of things geographically to get out and see and do.”
So, cynicism safely tucked away, he embarks happily on discussions of his latest film. The Patriot, which releases here on July 20th, pits young Ledger up against the awesome talent of a Mr Mel Gibson. Ledger plays the son of Gibson's war hero, who is an amalgam of various figures of importance in The War of Independence. He was very happy to pick up the part of Gabriel in the film after a year of turning down roles because they were too similar to the bad-boy teenager that be played in the American teen hit, Ten Things I Hate About You.
“[Gabriel] has an interesting arc to him, he's not just a one-dimensional character. He's eighteen years old and he's been living on a farm all his life. He goes away to war for two years and comes back a young man -- you can play with that and you can really pull the strings.”
Gabriel, in The Patriot, is the counter-point to Gibson's more jaded war veteran, who has now settled down, had a family, and wants nothing to do with war. As the oldest child in that family, Gabriel gets swept up in the patriotic fervour of the time and is keen to battle for his country's independence.
Even for the less cynical side of Ledger, it must have been more than a small leap to suddenly find yourself waving about an American flag and engaging in the perpetuation of that country's nationalistic myths. But Ledger explains that research for the role helped him come to some understanding of why Americans are so vehemently, um, American.
“I knew a little bit about the revolutionary war, but I knew about as much as the average American, which isn't much. It was really interesting. I discovered what they went through and I guess I gathered a new found respect for the country because they won an impossible battle. It was brutal, and, over the seven years that it spanned out, they lost sixty or seventy percent of their individual skirmishes. But they were persistent and they had passion.
“And I guess that answered a lot of questions on why they're so proud, and they raise their American flag, and sing out their songs so loud and proud, and have American world basketball championships with just Americans. And it was only two hundred years ago that this happened, and it still has to be sitting in the blood, I guess.”
The advantage in working on such a film, was the budget that went along with it. Even Ten Things I Hate About You had a pretty small budget, and before that Ledger was in the Australian independent film, Two Hands. The difference with The Patriot was marked, but initially, it was nerve-racking for the young actor.
“At the beginning there were a lot of added pressure -- because it was the first time that I'd done something on a bigger budget – it's huge. As opposed to making a small movie like Two Hands, where you put four million bucks in and if you make money, fine, but if you don't, it doesn't matter and it's just about what's going on in front of the camera.
“And all of a sudden you have to make three hundred million dollars just to break even, and all of a sudden it's like ‘hang on, I feel like I'm part of a machine’.”
Eventually though, the advantages of the situation became apparent, and Ledger is quick to note that working with the likes of director of photography Caleb Deschanel, director Roland Emmerich, and actors such as Mel Gibson and Chris Cooper were among the many benefits of the arrangement despite the striking difference in acting style between the two.
“Mel wouldn't know his lines until he was literally on there, and we're about to shoot. And he was like‘oh, fuck!', looking around, and someone would hand him some paper, and he'd say‘oh shit! Oh fuck! I've got this much? Oh great!’and he's scrounging through it and puts it down and just bang! Does it. And he leaves it that fresh, and he knows just what he's doing and he keeps himself so disattached from it until that moment, and it's so fresh that it's just brilliant.
“Chris Cooper – I snuck over and I opened up his script on set, and on the back of every page of his script were just notes – intense notes on just what to do, where to look, how to say it, what he's thinking -- he’s a brilliant actor, but everyone has their different ways of tackling it.”
Ledger doesn't give too many details on his acting style, and while he is keen to give credit to Gibson's influence on him during the film, he is coy about specifics. It is easy to make a link between the quiet and amiable interview styles that the two share though, and this fires suspicions that not all the lessons were about life in front of the camera.
“I guess he [Gibson] has helped me in the way that he's teached me a hell of a lot. He's taught me a lot professionally and socially in the industry, and it's nothing that I could or would really want to voice to you, because it's something of my own, and it's somewhat subtextual, but he did help me, he did help me a lot.”
Despite the bonuses of the size of the project, Ledger concedes that the shoot was, at times, exhausting, and that, outside of time spent in front of the camera, he looked forward to seeing it end.
“About halfway through the movie, I think everyone was wanting it to be over because it was just so fucking long, really. It was big, it was big, it was big and it was big and it was complicated.”
And just when you think that the cynic has once more broken the surface, we again meet the enchanted child in the man.
“But as much
as I wanted it to end, I was having the time of my life and I wanted it
to never end. That's the great thing about my job. I love it, and it's
not work when I'm working, it's play, and I enjoy it.”
-|-|-|-|-|-