The musician Heath Ledger always wanted to inhabit: “I was obsessed”
When Heath Ledger inhabited a character, he left no stone unturned. His preparation for The Dark Knight was infamous, as the actor dived headfirst into an intense immersion of the psychopath The Joker.
Ledger isolated himself for weeks, spurring on the madness through isolation. He kept a lengthy, detailed diary, filled with comics and personal notes that he believed the antihero would’ve made. In getting under the skin of the red-lipped freak, Hedger pushed himself to a manic edge. It paid off, thankfully, with his performance marking a blueprint for villains to come. He received endless critical acclaim.
However, Ledger, of course, had a softer side. There was a character who came from the real world, not a fictional one, whom he always wanted to inhabit. At a press conference in Venice in 2007, Ledger made his “obsession” with the musician known: “I was obsessed with an artist by the name of Nick Drake, who died in the 1970s at the age of 25. Suicide.”
Ledger continued, “And I was obsessed with his story and his music, and I pursued it for a little while, and I still have hopes to tell his story one day.” The tragic nature of Drake’s story is, of course, similar to Ledger’s, who died in 2008 at the age of 28 from an accidental overdose of mixed prescription medications.
As his career ramped up, Ledger found he had less interest in throwing himself at the potential of a biopic, and outside of his demanding schedule, part of this was because Drake is an elusive figure, because we know how his demise echoes Ledger’s, of course: he quietly passed away from an antidepressant overdose at the age of 26 in 1974. He had little success in his lifetime, but achieved posthumous fame for his melancholic, intricate acoustic verses.
Ledger continued discussing his previous obsession with Ledger, admitting, “It kind of died away, faded away, because he was a very mysterious figure and I felt like I was taking too many liberties.” Unlike the Joker, who has appeared in thousands upon thousands of comics since his debut in 1940 in the simply-titled Batman 1, Drake left a small, humble legacy.
Part of the allure of Drake’s music is this exact charm: We have crushingly beautiful, aching lyrics, such as “Life is but a memory / Happened long ago / Theatre full of sadness / For a long forgotten show,” but we don’t know how he got there. Unlike the chaotic cult of the celebrity today, which allows us parasocial insight into the exact events that caused a break-up anthem, for example, Drake leaves us guessing, collaborating with our own lives to make his music that much more honest.
Ledger’s resistance to taking “liberties” with Drake’s character shows a genuine respect for the late artist. A modern-day music biopic would only bring harm to Drake’s legacy.
That gaudy Netflix sheen, the cuts of AI-generated crowds, and the dramatic pauses mid-sentence would only make his tasteful art tacky and inappropriate. Ledger knew that, and now, so do you.
