My Favourite Actor: Heath Ledger

This January marks the two year anniversary of Heath Ledgers death. The actor was found dead in his Manhattan apartment by a masseuse and housekeeper on January 22nd 2008. Autopsy tests showed that he died of an accidental overdose of anti-anxiety and sleeping pills.

At the time of his death, Ledger had just finished filming the Dark Knight where he was the first non-American actor to play the joker and was in the process of filming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The day after he died, he was supposed to meet with Stephen Spielberg to explore the idea of him playing Tom Hayden in a film about the Chicago 7. In an interview with the New York Times, Ledger said he ‘stressed out a little too much’ while filming his role as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There and had trouble sleeping while portraying the Joker: ‘Last week I probably slept on average 2 hours a night. I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted but my mind was still going.’ Did the pressures of these demanding roles combine with the pressures of fatherhood and stardom to push Ledger over the edge and into an early grave?

Ledger’s first major role came as Patrick in the 1999 teen flick 10 Things I Hate About You which raked in $55,500,000 worldwide and ten times as many female fans for Heath. While the average actor would have taken this as success, Ledger feared of being typecast as a teen hunk and accepted a role in the war drama The Patriot alongside Mel Gibson. This reluctance to be potholed into the category of Hollywood Hunk cropped up frequently throughout Ledger’s career. After The Patriot came a striking inconsistency of roles as Ledger accepted virtually every role sent his way in a bid against being typecast. Some were met with praise, such as his role in Monsters Ball, while other flopped. Ned Kelly was such a disaster that distributors were hesitant to release it outside of Australia. ‘I feel like I’m wasting my time if I repeat myself’ Ledger explained, ‘I can’t say I’m proud of my work. It’s the same with everything I do: the day I say it’s good is the day I should start doing something else.’

Heath was finally met with deserved acclaim in 2005 as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, a film which won 78 awards and 64 nominations including 7 wins and 15 nominations for Ledger’s performance. After a series of failed attempts it seemed that Ledger had hit the mother lode. Ledger admitted ‘I started to get bored; not with the choices I was making, because I didn’t really have a choice. The choices were being made for me – I was being thrown into projects. So I kind of put the brakes on that. In a sense I destroyed my career to rebuild it again.’

Nevertheless, things didn’t get any easier for Ledger as the success of Brokeback Mountain created as many torments as it had triumphs. On the one hand, he was now a household name and had gotten engaged to co-star Michelle Williams, with whom he had a daughter Matilda. On the other, Ledger was now a Hollywood star who faced a constant battle with the limelight and finding new roles that would continue to challenge him and still be a hit at the box office.

Ledger was always frank about the high anxiety and self-doubt he suffered due to his career. ‘When I get cast in something, I always believe I shouldn’t have been cast. I fooled them again. I can’t do it. I don’t know how to do it. There’s a huge amount of anxiety that drowns out any excitement I have towards the projects.’

While his career pushed him to his limits, Ledger looked to his 2 year old daughter Matilda, his engagement to Williams having broken down in 2007. An employee at a children’s store in Ledger’s neighbourhood said she had frequently seen Ledger with his daughter – carrying the toddler on his shoulders, or having an ice cream with her. ‘They were really close. He’s a very down to earth guy and an amazing father.’

Although the joys and normality of fatherhood relaxed him and gave him a sense of freedom, Ledger could never escape his new A-List title and the horde of Paparazzi and red carpets that came with it. Notoriously shy, Ledger described walking down the red carpet as ‘diving into an Olympic pool, swimming the length underwater then emerging gasping for breath.’

It is these pressures of fame that some blame for Ledger’s death. Others say that his never ending stream of difficult roles overworked him. What proves most interesting about Ledger’s death, however, is that the majority blame no-one. Instead of pointing the finger, people celebrated his life and career. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said ‘Heath Ledger’s diverse and challenging roles will be remembered as some of the greatest performances by an Australian actor.’ It appears that in his death, Ledger achieved all that he had wanted from life: for people to not to fascinate over his appearance or personal life or Hollywood status, but to appreciate and, above all, enjoy his performances as an actor. As Ledger himself put it, ‘when I die, my money’s not going to come with me. My movies will live on for people to watch and judge what I was as a person.’

Robyn