As the kind of actor who prefers to let his performances speak for themselves, Heath Ledger hasn’t always been the easiest “get,” even as he’s trod a spate of recent red carpets after receiving a wealth of accolades for his stunning performance as the conflicted gay ranch hand in Brokeback Mountain. But arriving at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival to collect the fest’s Breakthrough Award just week after receiving his first Oscar nomination as Best Actor, Ledger was as close to loquacious as he’s ever likely to get.
Hollywood.com asked Ledger if he was especially gratified that it was this particular film and performance that had drawn such particular acclaim, and he was surprisingly candid. “Not particularly this film,” he explained. “It has taken a long time for me, and I’ve had to really carve a course out and make mistakes and learn and evolve. Every movie has kind of led up to now, to today, and it’ll continue to grow. So I’m a little hesitant to give this film the sole credit for my career. It’s definitely given me probably the most wonderful opportunity of today in terms of the character and how intricate he is and kind of textured and tragic. It was definitely the best opportunity to sort of bite into something and spit it out.”
Ledger traveled the red carpet at the Lobrero Theater with his lady love, the equally Oscar-nominated Michelle Williams, on his arm (she demurely preferred that he take the spotlight), and he told Hollywood.com that his often surreal trek through the Hollywood awards gala gauntlet had been much easier to take because they were going through it together. “Oh, it really has,” he said. “It’s kind of like we get to go and just support each other, as opposed to feeling like we’re being watched. We can just watch each other. So it just takes the nerves away and we can be proud of each other, that sort of thing.”
Writer-director Brian Helgeland, who worked with Ledger in A Knight’s Tale and The Order, was also on hand to present Ledger’s award. “As an actor I think that Heath’s got something worth watching because he’s an actor who’s figured out a way to tell the truth and that’s the way that I felt when I saw Brokeback Mountain,” he told the audience. “In the film, as Ennis Del Mar, he tells us, ‘If you can’t fix something then you have to stand it.’ The ‘it’ in Brokeback Mountain is the love that he feels, and so we are blessed to watch him stand in his nakedness, in misery, the vulnerability and nothingness. Heath Ledger tells the truth, and however he chooses to express it in the future I hope that we get to watch it for a long, long time.”
Ledger joined Maxim’s film critic Pete Hammond onstage for a tour through his career–the actor, while quite thoughtful and cooperative, was visibly uncomfortable under such public scrutiny, yet his clear discomfort ultimately charmed the crowd–and Hollywood.com has the highlights.
On his early beginnings in acting:
“My sister used to do high school plays, and I used to sit down in the front and watch her, and that’s it. It looked like she was having a lot of fun. It was a profession that was going to get me a lot of time off, and I thought that that was good. I guess that it started off as a sort of lifestyle sort of thing like, ‘That could be fun.’ And when I started I was terrible, hopeless. I actually remember the first TV show that I did, going to my mum and saying, ‘Mum, I don’t think that I can do this. I don’t think that I can act. I’m really shit, and that’s no lie.’ I was waiting for her to kind of pat me on the back and say, ‘It’s okay, son. It’s alright. It’s good.’ She said, ‘Well…yeah. It’s okay though.’ I thought, ‘Oh, God. I am–I’m bad.’”
On The Partiot, his first Hollywood breakthrough role:
“I got called back and I was reading for Roland Emmerich, the director, and then I just stopped halfway through the reading and I apologized. I said, ‘I’m wasting your time. I’m wasting my time. This is silly.’ I stood up and I shook their hands and walked out. Then I got the job. I couldn’t believe it. But I did it every time after that, too, to see if it worked…Mel [Gibson] helped me out. It was the first really big budget film that I did. It was a $115 gazillion. It was definitely the most nervous that I had been walking onto a set. I was very intimidated by the budget, very intimidated by having to work opposite Mel Gibson. He was very quick to sort of settle my nerves and he treated me very well. He had some kind words and put me at ease straight away. He’s a bit of a lark and sort of has a wonderful sense of humor, but it was definitely a different experience from making Two Hands in Sydney for $3 million American.”
On his aspirations to direct:
“I don’t think that it’s about gaining more control, but I’m directing music video clips and stuff now when I’ve been able to. I definitely feel comfortable sitting back and working out the mathematics of film and performance, and I certainly have gone out of my way to study the directors that I’ve worked with and have observed them…I think that there are definitely actors out there who are good directors, but I don’t know if there’s one perfect recipe for a director. They come in all shapes and sizes – and they should, because the more varied that the directors are that you work with, the more flexible you have to become as an actor. I think that it would be boring if everyone was the same.”
On horses, his frequent co-stars:
“I’ve got one out in the back. It’s something that I said I could do going into movies, but I couldn’t. But you learn pretty quickly, and so yeah, it’s hard to get off of horseback these days for me in movies. I actually really have grown into a love affair with horses. I really adore them. I like the physical aspect of it too, jumping on and off of them…I guess the only time that I haven’t done the stunts is in A Knight’s Tale, when they’re getting hit, when they’re jousting which is just stupid. And you had to wear a helmet, too, and so it was like, ‘Why bother?’”
On acting in the occasional box office failure and his career plan:
“The failure doesn’t take anything out of my pocket. It’s a failure to the people who put their money into the film. For me [The Four Feathers] was a huge success, getting work with Shekhar Kapur. He’s such a spiritual human being and a wise one. It’s like working with Yoda. He would like float to set and I would sit there and talk with him for hours and hours and hours about love and life and destiny, and I just love that stuff. So I got a lot out of that experience, I really did…That’s how I judge the success. I mean, what else can I judge from? For me, that’s where I’m living and breathing, the movie. If that doesn’t work it’s a failure. I understand whether it’s a success financially or not, but it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t physically ever hurt from it. I truly just remember the time making the film, and they’ve all been successful for me. whether or not I failed or the movie failed I always just try and learn from it…I think that my criteria changes as I mature as a person. At one point it was just about working and where we were shooting it. Or who will take me…I don’t have a set plan. I don’t feel like I’m planning an attack. I like to them to sort of drop from the sky and land in my lap. If it all works then it feels right, but it’s very hard to put my finger on it.”
On working with director Terry Gilliam on The Brothers Grimm:
“He’s chaotic in such a brilliant way. I really adore Terry. He’s really hands-on. He’s constantly shuffling around on his hands and knees in the dirt and placing props, and I like the speed in which his mind thinks. It accelerates you to kind of be where he’s at. He pushes your imagination and he has such a genuine enthusiasm and a love for his eccentric, nutty ideas and the world of films and storytelling. I think that we shot for a 115 days in Prague, pretty much everyday, but every single was just an absolute pleasure to wake up and work for him…It was probably more frustrating for him. He was bickering with the Weinsteins, and he kind of came out second best. They really gave him a good beating, but that’s another story. I think that the world is a better place with Terry in it, and I think that the industry is a better place with his films in it as well. He’s so refreshing and I’d follow him into any battle.”
On Brokeback Mountain and playing his conflicted character, Ennis Del Mar:
“The story and the topic, whether or not it’s controversial, it’s just, I think, relative to the person that you are. We understood that there were fears and anxieties attached to it, but they weren’t ours. It was a beautiful story that hadn’t been told and hadn’t made it to the screen, and that’s rare. It was a perfect script with a perfect director. So I didn’t have any reason not to do it…What was interesting to me was there was a battle that I had to discover that wasn’t written in words and I knew that I had to convey. I had to physicalize his battle and his story, and it was going to take so much control and it was so tragic and so lonely. He was like a person who just has pure potential and never gets past that. I think that it was going to take a more mature version of myself, which I’m always looking for, and it did…Any form of expression had to be painful. I think that violence was one of the only forms of expression he allowed himself, so I wanted him to be clenched and his mouth sort of became clenched and the words were kind of finding their way out from there. I really spent a lot of time trying to put who he was and his story, his tragedy–I wanted to put it into his toes and into his hands. I wanted the sounds of life to be too loud and the light of day to be too bright. For someone who was so closed and had this inability to love and express, who is in fact incredibly vulnerable and incredibly emotional–that all had to be going on somewhere inside of him. There was just so much to do. It looked like a challenge and it was a big challenging. Aging was what I thought was going to be the biggest challenge for me in the movie. If we couldn’t do that convincingly there would be no story and no film, and so figuring that out was very important. I didn’t want to overdo it. The physical difference between 18 and 40 is fairly slim, and certainly with this character he never really evolved much either between those ages. I didn’t have a lot to work with, aging-wise. So I used his accent. When he was younger I pitched it slightly higher with more enthusiasm and energy, and then as he got older all the enthusiasm disappeared, and I tried to make him more desolate and deeper.”
On being directed by Ang Lee:
“He was very good at making you believe that he’s important and the story is important and your character is important, and he really inspires you to investigate and take it seriously. It was very poetic, and he comes out with these little profound statements that somehow mean so much to you and your character, and you kind of go away and digest it. But the biggest gift that I think he gives you, and that’s while you’re working on the set, is freedom. While you’re shooting you have freedom. He doesn’t say a thing at all while you’re shooting. You’re very aware that this is now his time to create, and so he kind of leaves you alone and I really love that. By the time we got to shooting we knew our characters inside and out and you should. So he just allows you to really breathe.”
On filming Brokeback Mountain’s intimate love scenes with Jake Gyllenhaal:
“We actually used stunt doubles [Laughs]. Face replacement. There is no real way to rehearse or to prepare for a love scene. There just isn’t. What I knew I had to give at least to those scenes, and I think that Jake had a more difficult task–the character had these fears and anxieties, and so did I. I thought that that was what I was going to have to give in order for this be captured on film. I wasn’t going to have to be acting it or anything. It’s going to be straight up real and for the first time and uncomfortable and awkward, but I don’t have to act that I’m not. That’s what I used. I just so used that. So I knew that I had that to offer to the story.”
On falling in love with his co-star Michelle Williams and the subsequent birth of their daughter, Matilda:
“Yeah, look, that is definitely, hands down, the biggest gift that I was given from that film, just the level to which my life has changed is phenomenal. So that definitely exceeds anything else.”
On celebrity:
“We’re all in it for different reasons, it seems. That side of it just seems to come with the choice of my profession, which is acting, and what I genuinely get out of it is an enthusiasm and curiosity for life and how it operates and how different people operate and I’m forced into asking questions about them and therefore asking questions about myself. So I get a lot out of it personally, and it’s a bit hard when people chase you around and the whole celebrity thing. But you either chose to buy into that and you become a celebrity, or you chose to kind of play along with it, but then go home and think about what you’re going to do the next morning…I don’t have to hide in front of a mask to go out and observe life. I’m amongst life. I’m participating in life. But I feel like a lot of Hollywood celebrities’ performances get stale when you spend too much time working and too much time in Hollywood, because they start to kind of imitate themselves and actors around them. So you’ve got to not work and go out and breathe and feel normal. I haven’t worked for a year, and I’m not planning to work for another year for obvious reasons, but all in all it’s going to make me a better actor, because it’ll make me a better person, hopefully.”
On his surreal trip through awards season:
“Through the whole awards season there is so much going on. There are so many different awards and it all becomes one thing. It all just blurs into the same thing, and it’s surreal and it’s like a real false sense of success and failure at the same time. You’re being thrust into competitions and a race, and you’re looking left and right and all your competitors are actually competing in different sports, and you’re all starting in different places and you’re not ending at the same line. But you’re all in the same race. You don’t want to be in a race, but you are. Tradition deems it important, though. Therefore it’s a great honor for us, and we’re very grateful for it. I think that we’re trying to get through it and stay calm and relaxed and then it’ll probably sink in later, once it’s all over. Once again, I think that we have the most beautiful distraction at home. So once we go home, you think about that only.”
On accepting the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Breakthrough Award:
“I would like to take the shine off of myself for a minute and acknowledge the directors who have helped and continue to help me understand what it means to be an actor…I truly feel that I should be honoring them tonight. I’m grateful that these directors have given me the opportunity to discover that to be an actor has nothing to do with the way that you live your life and the choices that you make while living, but rather the way that you live and the choices that you make between action and cut. These directors gave me the opportunity to be bad, to make mistakes and to study and learn from my mistakes. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was never exposed to the environment of an acting school and a black pair of pajamas and I didn’t have a black room to experiment within, to privately dance within. My dance is on film. These directors trusted me and offered me their film sets and their friendships as the safe environment for me to study and make discoveries on. So I apologize for the bad discoveries made along the way, but I do stand by the theory that, in order to evolve and further yourself as an actor, you have to be fearless enough to allow yourself room for error. Sometimes you must scream out loud in order to discover how to whisper. I thank all of these beautiful minds and these wonderful crews around them in the past years for putting up with my screams, and I thank everyone for their patience in waiting for me to find the whisper within the words. And here’s to making more mistakes.”
