The only movie Heath Ledger was allowed to watch as a child: “I love the magic”
Most of us have films that dominate our early memories as kids; for me, it was Star Wars, the 1977 original, watched over and over again to the point that the quality of the VHS tape started to suffer, and I may have believed for some time that I had ‘the force’ (it was mumps).
And for the late Heath Ledger, his movie of choice was another all-time classic story of a battle between good and evil.
Ledger decided to embark on an acting career at a young age despite not being able to see many films at home. He played Peter Pan at school, and his sister, who was an actor by trade, influenced his choices in leaving school in Australia to follow in her footsteps.
After taking some small roles in TV shows, including, of course, Home and Away (it was that or Neighbours) through the 1990s, he made a film debut in an Australian film called Blackrock in 1997 and that was enough to bring him to the attention of Hollywood, resulting in his getting the lead in 1999’s 10 Things I Hate About You.
That teen comedy was a hit and prompted Ledger to move into a different league entirely; soon, he was appearing with fellow Aussie Mel Gibson in big-budget fare like The Patriot and then in a supporting role in the Oscar-winning Monster’s Ball in 2001. That same year, he took the lead in A Knight’s Tale, which has recently been rediscovered on streaming sites.
He really found acclaim a few years later when he made Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, being nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe. It was on that film that he met co-star Michelle Williams, with whom he would be for three years and have a child. She would go on to star in 2013’s fantasy prequel Oz the Great and the Powerful, five years after Ledger’s death, which brought things full circle to some degree.
That’s because the original Wizard of Oz, made in 1939 and starring Judy Garland, was a pivotal influence for Ledger as a child, as he revealed in the years before he passed away. Asked about his favourite film of all time, he said: “I have to say The Wizard of Oz. I saw it about ten times when I was little, because it was the only film my parents allowed me to see as a kid. I just love the magic of it.”
Ledger, of course, would enter into cinematic immortality himself thanks to his portrayal of the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight in 2008, and he isn’t the only man to have played that twisted role with a link to The Wizard of Oz.
Joaquin Phoenix was almost as feted for his unhinged Joker in the 2019 reboot and spoke around the time of release about how he based some of the character’s infamous dancing scenes on the ‘soft shoe’ work shown by the Scarecrow in the film, played by Ray Bolger.
The Wizard of Oz was a critical success on release, combining both black and white and technicolor and involving an enormous amount of sets and cast members. It earned five Oscar nominations and won out for the song ‘Over the Rainbow’ as performed by Garland. Strangely, it didn’t become a real commercial hit for some ten years until it was rereleased in 1949.
