Heath Ledger on the secret to acting: “You have to be willing to be manipulated”
It’s hard to put into words just how special Heath Ledger was, with the Australian actor embodying a sensitivity that felt beyond his age, and a kind of uncontainable spark that seeped into all of his performances. He’s the kind of person who makes you ponder the inevitable ‘what if’, wondering what else he might have done and the stories he had to tell. In the years just before his tragic passing, he gave one of the greatest performances of all time. His portrayal of The Joker is still widely regarded as the most charismatic of all iterations that came before and after it, trumping that of Jack Nicholson’s and Joaquin Phoenix’s performances through his wild erraticism and raw unpredictability.
But it seemed as though Ledger was destined to be a star from the very beginning, with his first major Hollywood role coming in 1999 after playing Patrick Verona in the beloved rom-com classic, 10 Things I Hate About You, an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew. Ledger plays a high school bad boy who is lured into a scheme to try and date someone who matches his troublesome reputation, with the pair inadvertently falling in love and becoming the perfect couple.
There are many swoon-worthy scenes from the film in which Ledger effortlessly dazzles us, whether it be his serenading of Kat on the football pitch or his cheeky grin while chewing cocktail sticks. But the actor also showcased extreme versatility through his later roles, like in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which follows a devastating love story that continues to rip your heart to pieces every minute the characters are on screen.
Many people have studied his approach to acting, something that became a particular source of intrigue after his performance in The Dark Knight Rises, with Christopher Nolan revealing many behind-the-scenes snippets showcasing the true extent of his genius. They shed light on many improvised lines and moments that highlight his commitment to creativity to perfectly realise the idiosyncrasies of a crazed genius.
However, Ledger once discussed his approach to collaboration and the secrets that helped fine tune his performances, saying, “You have to be willing to be manipulated in the first place because you can either recognise that in your director and then fight it because you don’t trust them, but I’m not going to let them manipulate me. Or you think they’re on to something and that they’re manipulating something out of you which is interesting and new.”
Other actors like Nicole Kidman have highlighted a similar aspect of the process, talking about how you have to let yourself be moulded by the director and place complete trust in them to do so, forging a uniquely intimate relationship as you lend your entire self to their vision. Ledger had also revealed that he looked to moments that weren’t on the page to flesh out his character, saying, “People generally express more in between their sentences when they’re not speaking. Words are usually there to disguise who someone is or what they’re feeling. So sometimes words are too complicated and they over-intellectualise moments.”
It is true that we often reveal more about ourselves through moments of silence and the way we move our bodies when reacting to something, with small flickers of eye contact and nervous tics, showing how we truly feel without words we would never dream of expressing. Ledger was a genius for this very reason—looking beyond the surface and building a character through all the unspoken moments from something that no one else could see.
