movieline04-01

He touched teen hearts with 10 Things I Hate About You, then grabbed everyone else with The Patriot. Now Heath Ledger is starring in a rockin' medieval adventure, Brian Helgeland's A Knight's Tale, and has already shot Elizabeth director Shekhar Kapur's Four Feathers. Here Ledger explains how he keeps his sanity in the mounting storm of stardom, provides a plausible theory on why Aussies are stealing the best parts in Hollywood films, and praise the new love in his life, Heather Graham.

At the moment Heath Ledger isn't the prince of the red carpet. But those in the know in Hollywood have high hopes for the boyish-looking 22-year-old Australian actor with only two major US film credits under his belt. Teens kickstarted Hollywood's Heathwave in 1999 when they caught him as the brooding high school tough guy who spanks Julia Stiles into good behaviour in 10 Things I Hate About You. A year later, Ledger drew interest from a broader audience when he starred as Mel Gibson's stubborn son in The Patriot. But even before The Patriot was released, word about the film had given Hollywood a good case of Heathitis, which caused writer/director Brian Helgeland (Payback) to meet with Ledger for his rollicking medieval adventure A Knight's Tale, a go-figure mix of action, bawdy humor, romance and heartfelt emotion held together by a brashly anachronistic thread of rock songs like Queen's "We Will Rock You" and David Bowie's "Golden Years."
Ledger walked away with the lead role as the squire who disguises himself as a knight so he can compete in the jousting matches. Now the film is generating sensational buzz, and Sony is releasing it in Hollywood's most competitive season, early summer. Should A Knight's Tale fail to put Ledger on top, his fall film, Shekhar Kapur's Four Feathers, stands a good chance of doing the trick. In the remake of the 1939 war epic, he costars with Wes Bently and Kate Hudson as a British officer determined to prove his courage during the uprising in Sudan.

Ledger's personal life puts a celebrity gloss on his growing fame. While filming A Knight's Tale last year in Prague, he met and fell in love with an actress nine years his senior, Heather Graham, who was there shooting the Jack the Ripper thriller From Hell with Johnny Depp. Since then the two have been paprizzed everywhere, and have been the subject of many a gossip column.

While fam may be relatively new to Ledger, acting isn't. He landed his first professional gig at age 10 in a local stage production of Peter Pan. In high school he was the president of the drama club, but no theatre nerd was he-- Ledger was also the school's field hockey star. Upon graduating at age 16, he moved from his hometown of Perth to Sydney to pursue his acting career. Various jobs, includding a starring role opposite Keri Russell on the TV series "Roar," elevated him to teen-idol status. That gave him the courage to try his luck in America. Within months he was cast in the gangster thriller Two Hands, which required him to fly back to Australia, where the film was shot. After that he got his big break in 10 Things I Hate About You.

When I met Ledger in the coffee shop in L.A.'s trendy hotal The Standard, he;s clad in oversized sunglasses, surfer-style beaded jewlery and a big fleece jacket. He's 100 percent L.A. groovy. But it's not only his attire that grabs attention-- his mere physical presence is something to behold. At six feet four inches [sic], with broad shoulders a wildass mop of fashinably tangeled bedhead, Ledger commands the room. Women stare, not knowing for sure who he is but knowng for sure he's someone. Though Ledger may look like a Hollywood scenester, he is not the least bit pretentious.

MORE....