“I was really nervous at first”: the one actor Heath Ledger called his “hero”
Even though he was only 28 years old when he passed away in January 2008 with less than 20 feature film appearance to his name, it’s getting increasingly clear that Heath Ledger has become a hero to the current generation of actors, many of whom have cited him as a huge influence on their career.
That’s an impressive legacy to leave behind for someone who tragically died so young, but it just goes to show how highly he was regarded. Ledger had all the makings of a generational talent, with Matt Damon calling him the best he’d ever seen in the flesh, and his eclectic range of performances reflected that belief.
However, his instantly iconic outing as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight will always be remembered as his definitive role, and not only because it won him a posthumous Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in a movie that became the first comic book adaptation to earn a billion dollars and is arguably the finest entry in the genre’s history.
When Ledger was first announced as the ‘Clown Prince of Crime’, not everyone was convinced, mostly because his detractors thought the guy from A Knight’s Tale and 10 Things I Hate About You was too clean-cut and handsome to play Batman’s arch-nemesis, words that were well and truly eaten.
In the years since, his performance has been singled out by Timothée Chalamet, Jacob Elordi, Austin Butler, and former rising star turned Hollywood exile, Jonathan Majors, as one that made a profound impact on them when they were aspiring actors, but who had the same effect on him?
Ledger’s first taste of blockbuster filmmaking came when he landed a key supporting part in Roland Emmerich’s questionably accurate period epic, The Patriot, even if he didn’t make it until the end credits. However, the chance to work with the big-budget flick’s leading man was a pinch-me moment for the youngster, who saw him as not just a personal icon, but a national one.
“It was a real learning curve,” he admitted to Gene Triplett in 2000. “I guess I was really nervous at first. Really nervous at first. Because it was such a big picture, and it was Mel Gibson. He’s like my hero. Our hero in Australia, for sure. But he put me at ease straightaway, because he’s such a lovely bloke. Really lovely guy. He’s a gentleman.”
Those aren’t things many people inside the industry have said about Gibson in the last two decades, but since Ledger got the chance to work with his hero years before the arrest that cast him into the wilderness forevermore, he didn’t see that side of him. Instead, he saw an A-list superstar, a two-time Academy Award winner, and one of Australia’s most iconic filmic exports.
Most Australian actors in Ledger’s generation, with the Brothers Grimm and Brokeback Mountain favourite coincidentally being born eight days before George Miller’s Mad Max premiered in April 1979, would no doubt have seen Gibson as someone they wanted to emulate when they made their first steps into the business, given his global profile and success. Needless to say, things have probably changed since then.
