How Heath Ledger became an icon with just four steps: “Hire him immediately”
The start of a career can happen in an instant. It can be the flash of a smile or the shimmy of a gait, and for Heath Ledger it was both.
The star, lost far too soon, enjoyed a bright and sparkling career. While he may have started out as a teen heartthrob he would excel in the acting space and soon be rightly considered a treasured artist, a feeling that would be accelerated by his tragic passing.
His role in The Dark Knight is now considered one of the finest supporting roles of all time, as his Joker defied expectations and redefined superhero villains in an instant, but his resume extends beyond that. Brokeback Mountain was another moment where Ledger attempted to subvert what was expected of him, while his portrayal of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There was another high point. But like all careers, it needed to start with a single movie, and for Ledger, it was in 10 Things I Hate About You.
If you are searching for a rom-com that is able to delight true devotees of the genre and still placate the cynics, then the 1999 teen adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is about as good as you will get. While the plot is one best left unearthed when you find yourself in need of such a movie, one of the brightest points of the picture is Ledger’s portrayal of Patrick, the rougish bad boy with an infallible smile and a cheeky sense of humour.
It would undoubtedly launch Ledger’s career into new realms, and it all came to pass after just four steps.
“I had read 253 guys,” director Gil Junger remembered of the process of trying to find his lynchpin character, Patrick. And in truth, Ledger almost didn’t get his chance to read: “Marcia Ross, who was the head of casting, she said, ‘Look, I don’t know this last kid, honestly, it’s a favour for an agent that I respect,” explained Junger.
Clearly exasperated by the process and unwilling to give in just yet, Junger continued: “So I said, ‘Fine, just bring him in’. So, the door opens and Heath walks in, but I don’t know it’s Heath yet.”
And then it happened, the moment Heath Ledger began his journey to be an icon: “He took about four steps towards me, and this is exactly what I thought, ‘If this fucker can read English, I’m gonna cast him'”.
Now, it wasn’t that Junger was just so deep into the process that he was desperate, the truth is, Ledger had something unique. “There was just a presence, there was a confidence, he just walked in as if to say ‘This is who I am. Period.'”
It was a moment that would seal the feat of Junger’s movie, “So he sits down across from me, and at that time I think I was reading with them, and we got to the end of the first page and I said, ‘Heath, cool, let’s put the script down, we’re good with the sides’. His face got white. And I said, ‘This is a good thing, trust me it’s a good thing'”. Junger had a new idea: “Let’s do a little improv, I wanted to see if he even had an inkling of ‘funny’. We did about 30 seconds of improv, I said ‘Thank you so much'”.
With such a statement, there are only two outcomes, and they are polar opposites of one another. Ledger was, according to Junger, “still shaken, because he flew 17 hours and he had two minutes with me, literally, I said ‘I can’t say it’s going to be this movie, but young ma,n you are going to have a huge career'”.
The door closed behind the young actor, and Junger turned to his casting team, who were all women, and noted that while he had never had the desire to sleep with another man that “If I had to sleep with a man, that would be the man. Hire him immediately.”
They did, and the actor began his journey to becoming one of the most beloved performers of his generation. He would break out of the shackles of his sex appeal to demonstrate his ability as an artist. But while that is certainly commendable, it must all be tracked back to four little footsteps that made a whole room fall in love with him.
