Stars Discuss Heath Ledger’s Legacy in ‘Entertainment Weekly’

Jan 16, 2009 at 1:40pm
34 Comments
Lifestyle

Heath Ledger, who won a posthumous Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actor in The Dark Knight, is the subject of Entertainment Weekly‘s latest cover story.

In the new issue, Heath’s friends, former co-stars and those who worked with him behind the scenes open up with their thoughts on the actor, who died nearly a year ago, on January 22, 2008.

Below are some of the quotes from the piece:

Julia Stiles, co-star, 10 Things I Hate About You (1999): “Heath always seemed so mature. I got the sense he was averse to becoming any kind of teen idol. I think he felt like 10 Things had more substance, but he anticipated that if he did more movies like this, he’d get stuck doing teen romantic comedies.”

Mel Gibson, co-star, The Patriot (2000): “His audition for The Patriot was rough. But he got the gig because of some kind of honest thing that was intrinsic to him. He was just authentic and sincere. I don’t think he knew the power he had already. So he’d work himself up into an angst situation, trying to get at things that were already there. You almost wanted to say, ‘Dude, just calm down and be yourself. It’s good.’”

<

;strong>Wes Bentley, co-star, The Four Feathers (2002): “Heath didn’t give himself enough credit for his talent as an actor. He didn’t know what he had so he decided to enjoy what was being offered to him. I wanted to explain to him, ‘Please wake up to how great you are’…I didn’t go to the funeral because I know Heath would have been laughing at it. He would have had that smile on his face. At the very least he would have shrugged it off.”

Gary Oldman, co-star, The Dark Knight (2008): “I kind of raised my eyebrow at the casting and thought, Oh, I wonder how that will be. But any concerns that one may have had vanished when you got on the set with him. I did a couple of scenes with Heath in the first leg of the shoot in London. I called a friend and he said, ‘How’s Heath?’ I said, ‘He’s breathtaking. He’s going to be astounding.’ I could tell just working for five minutes with him.”

Ledger was 28 at the time of his death. He would have turned 30 in April.

Written by
Gary Oldman in Batman
Oldman - Gary Oldman Photo (904168) - Fanpop
Gary Oldman
Gary Oldman: from Sid to Smiley: the rollercoaster story of a true British great
Gary Oldman returns to London this weekend in the role of prodigal son, the wayward talent brought in from the cold. He arrives from California to find a landscape very different from the one he left in the early 1990s. The fiery social-realist BBC ...