LOS ANGELES - Heath Ledger's introduction to most America moviegoers was his role as Mel Gibson's son in "The Patriot."
Others remember him as bad boy Patrick Verona in "10 Things I Hate About You."
Today, Ledger steps from the shadow of supporting roles and into the spotlight as the hero of "A Knight's Tale."
In this screenplay based on Chaucer's story of the same name, Ledger plays peasant William Thatcher, who reinvents himself as knight and jouster Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein of Gelderland. This story separates itself from Chaucer quickly.
Writer and director Brian Helgeland has written a story splashed with modern touches - most notably the loud and rowdy sound of rock music instead of lutes, the women's costumes and Ulrich's new armor.
Ledger strolled into a Beverly Hills hotel room with all the aplomb and confidence of a 21-year-old whose 22nd birthday was three days away. He slouched down into a chair, smiled cheerily and put his pack of cigarettes down on the table.
He liked Helgeland's script the first time he read it.
"It had well-written comedy, the drama was driven and the action sounded out of this world; I didn't know how they were going to pull that off," he said. "And, somewhere Brian smuggles in this rich heartbeat that just thumps throughout the script."
Ledger loved that his character got to do everything: dance, sing - and joust.
He could ride a horse, but adding armor and a lance was something else again.
"It was pretty hard. The lances were weighed out properly and made of balsa wood, so we weren't as heroic as it looks," he said. "The armor wasn't made of balsa and it was kind of a pain. Riding those horses, the armor would bounce us up and down and it put a lot of pressure on our vertebrae, especially in our lower backs, things were slipping out all the time. There were always discs moving and they'd have to get someone in to straighten us out."
He used his hands to show a wrenching movement, complete with sound effects, to show the chiropractic treatments all the riders had.
Still, the armor and lances weren't the worst part. Every man who had anything to do with the horses agreed that they were the worst part of the action scenes.
The horses used are a rare Czech breed, Kladruby, huge horses whose lineage goes back 700 years. They pulled royal carriages and served as the Medieval equivalent of tanks.
Ledger loves horses but said these animals were simply huge.
Since these horses had not been used that way for hundreds of years, the ones brought in for the movie were skittish. It took several people to hold and calm them when they were startled.
In a scene not in the movie, Ledger learned he could move much faster than he thought.
"Those poor horses, they were freaking out. They're sitting at one end of the list with this guy on their back wearing metal, making all this noise, really heavy, holding a stick and charging at another horse with a stick aimed at him," Ledger explained. "And we would have to kick them to make them run toward the other horse and on top of that, when the director yelled 'Action,' 500 people behind them would start yelling. It was bound to trip them up, so they would dance around a lot."
Ledger nearly lost his leg when his horse reared up and leaned away from the list, which is the fence between jousters. When the actor kicked the horse to get him back in line, he was too close to the fence, and Ledger had to move fast to avoid injury.
"That day, my knee was busted, I couldn't walk. I had a brace so I could ride. Somehow I managed to get my leg up around my ear and back behind me," he said, laughing about it now. "The horse just blistered the fence, ripped it apart and took a chunk out of his side, and my leg would have gone with it."
Ledger also is the star of the dance scene. He had taken dance lessons in Australia for three years, which helped.
In "A Knight's Tale," Helgeland uses modern music to help make an ancient tale understandable to modern audiences. For the dance scene, he had chosen "Get Down Tonight," a disco song by K.C. and the Sunshine Band. Ledger suggested a totally different sound, and it worked.
The scene was shot to David Bowie's "Golden Years."
By the end of the interview, Ledger had lit a cigarette. Most of the youthful cast interviewed that day smoked, and Ledger admitted that they all smoked through the slits in their armor face masks, but they did that for fun, more than for the nicotine.
After Ledger finishes promoting "A Knight's Tale," he has his first chunk of free time in 18 months. He's going to hang out in the United States for a while, then go home to Perth, Australia.
"I'm not doing anything. I'm taking six months off at least," he said.
Archive ID: 849902
