Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features)
And how was your 2005? Australian actor Heath Ledger fell in love with Michelle Williams, had a baby with her, and gave two of the best
You're in two very different roles this month. Doing all these different things was what this whole year was about for me. Prior to that I was bored with what I was doing in movies. I decided to make some more destructive choices that would hopefully mature me as a person and as an actor. So I went from The Brothers Grimm to Lords of Dogtown to Brokeback Mountain to Casanova and then straight into Candy, which is a love story between two heroin addicts. That's a pretty full dance card. Brokeback Mountain was obviously a lot weightier than Casanova. A lot of investigation went into my character Ennis Del Mar -- mentally and physically. I wanted to portray his inability to express himself. How did you do that? I spent a good couple of weeks trying to find his speaking voice. First, I found the right regional accent. Then I wanted his inability to love to come out of his mouth. So any form of expression had to be painful. I wanted him to be a clenched fist, and my mouth became a clenched fist, too. I wanted the words to just punch themselves out from within. Is Ennis gay? Or was he just able to connect with Jake Gyllenhaal's character more than with anyone else? For me, this was the story of one person and his soul falling in love with another soul; and the soul comes in the form of another man. I don't want to say that it's not a gay story, because it is. There would be a lot of people who would be really upset if we took that away from the film. But it's bigger than that. How did you prepare for the love scenes? Stretching ... Had you and Jake already bonded? No. That's not really preparing for a love scene. When you get on a film and find out who you're working with, you don't get on the phone and go, "Hey, maybe we should bond! Let's go get some beers!" "Bonding" just happens when you're with each other for 12 weeks, all talking about the same thing. Then how did you two negotiate your sex scenes together? They aren't love scenes for their own sake. There are stories to them. So my character's first encounter just said a lot about him. Ennis' only form of expression was through violence. That's why it was important that their first love scene would be a fight. Then when it calms down, I wanted this innate attraction to happen. It should be fiery [smacks hands together] -- then over. Unlike Ennis, I've investigated love, I'm in love with love, and I know how to feel heartache and pain from love and longing. It's the same thing with a love scene. I've engaged in similar kind of roughness! [Laughs] What's the hardest part of being a cowboy? Being a cowboy was the easiest part! I'm not a great fan of western movies, they kind of bore me sh*tless. So I didn't base it on like John Wayne or anything. But growing up in Western Australia, there's a lot of ranch hands and farm folk. There's something very universal about anyone who spends day and night on horseback. They walk as if they're still on the horse. You can break that right down to the way they see life. So how do you find your new home in Brooklyn? Well, I left Perth when I was 16, so I've spent ten years in big cities with TVs and stuff. I absolutely adore Brooklyn. The neighbors come out with lasagnas and we have like community dinners and our next door neighbor is the president of our street commission and we're going to go caroling next week. It's really, really sweet. How did this movie affect you personally? You're affected by whatever you're portraying. Your body has a memory of the experiences you have in life. If you're tricking yourself to feel anger every day, you go home angry. Then you get home, and you're like, "Argh! F*ck me, why am I angry? I've got no reason to be angry." And you wind yourself down again. But you do carry it. How different was making Casanova from Brokeback? Venice was a lot of fun. It's such an incredible city. It feels like it should only exist in dreams, in the imagination. Taking that role was a real lifestyle decision. We didn't have to take ourselves, acting or even Casanova himself very seriously. We kind of borrowed his name and his legend to have some fun with it: Kick up our heels, drink wine, eat pasta, play around ... So you took this character home with you, too. It was a pleasure to take him home! |
