"IN ACTING, I FIND IF YOU BELIEVE IT, YOU DISCOVER A TRUTH AND IT'S QUITE SPIRITUAL" - HEATH LEDGER

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Written for Heath and Matilda Ledger
You're My Littel Girl
Caelia Adams Piano & Vocals - 2010
Uploaded by Caelia2008

Lyrics:
Your smile reminds me so much of me.
Your laughter fills my heart.
Your playfulness in everything you do.
I never feel apart from you.
I'm sorry that I couldn't be there to catch you when you fall, to be there for it all.

Chorus
My Mattie, oh I love you baby. My Mattie, you are the diamond in my world.
If you ever wonder how I feel, just look up in the sky.
The star that shines the brightest is my love for you.
Just know your daddy always thinks about you all the time.
I'll always love you. You're my little girl.

If you ever want someone to listen, just know I haven't disappeared.
Whenever that you need me, just know that I'll be there to take away your tears,
to listen to your hopes and dreams, to help you find your way.
I'll be near you every day.

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Heath Ledger's Mom & Sis On Young Matilda - "She's Full Of Energy Like Her Dad"

I found the Interview including with Heath Ledger's mom and sister talking about 5 year old young Matilda - video with Heath's mother and sister talking....I found the comments interesting, including what Sally Bell said about Matilda, "she's quite amazing, I'm really surprised every day that I see her, she's polite (the article states this as "she's got light") and Kate added "she's full of energy". Sally, "full of energy like her dad.....I see a lot of similarities - both. I hope that Michelle's getting ready for all that...the energy." Posted on May 14, 2010

Also, Sally said: "It's a great honor that they're bestowing on Heath, having a scholarship in his name.... I think it's just amazing, the sponsorship that's gone into it, the generosity of people.”

Source

Text with the video:

Some of the brightest talents from the outback hit the red carpet for Australians in Film's 2010 Breakthrough Awards at the Thompson Hotel in Beverly Hills Thursday night, and RadarOnline.com was there to catch all the happenings on a night the late, great Heath Ledger was honored with a scholarship in his name.

Many in attendance, such as Australians In Film spokeswoman Sophie Scarf, praised the late star of The Dark Knight for the “incredible generosity” he displayed to his countrymen.

"He's housed hundreds of Australian actors," she said. "His house in LA was almost like a halfway house."

Ledger died at the age of 28 in January 2008 from an accidental overdose of prescription pills.

Trailer For Heath Ledger's Final Film

14 pictures of Heath

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Another interesting article:

A studio banks on a young Aussie actor to be the face of a summer adventure movie

By Lori Reese | May 15, 2001

Source: ew

Heath Wave

''Can I get you something?'' asks Heath Ledger, star of ''A Knight's Tale'' (in theaters May 11). ''Do you want some water? A Diet Coke?'' Yes, you heard right: EW.com goes to meet the Australian actor, 22, who isn't just ONE of the selling points for the summer comedy cum Middle Ages jousting saga, he's THE selling point -- and suddenly we've stumbled into an episode of ''Twilight Zone'' scripted by Miss Manners -- or maybe the editors of TigerBeat. Expectation: big star attitude. Reality: He's the perfect host.

Even so, there may be a few benighted moviegoers who don't yet recognize Ledger's name. But by now, even these people (peasants!) have seen his face -- on billboards, TV ads, magazine covers. The actor's been on the rise ever since his attention grabbing role as Mel Gibson's rebellious son in ''The Patriot.'' The same studio, Sony/Columbia, is also behind ''Knight,'' which just happened to be in production in Prague when Ledger's ''Patriot'' hit theaters. So an ensemble story about a wannabe knight and his friends has been transformed, if the splashy poster is to be believed, into a story about a guy who ''will rock you.''

Yet his ''Knight'' costars say the actor hardly notices the furor. ''He's walking around with a $40 million plus film on his shoulders like he's been doing it all his life,'' says Paul Bettany, the English actor who plays Geoffrey Chaucer (yes, the famous one) opposite Ledger's aspiring knight who transcends class to become a champion jousting stud. ''I just have to laugh at those posters, though'' adds Bettany. ''They make him look so butch.''

Butch enough to best an box office juggernaut like ''The Mummy Returns''? Ledger doesn't seem worried -- unless it's about you being thirsty while he talks about the knight life. (Um, we'll take that glass of water, thanks.)

You've said that when you tried out for your first U.S. role, in the Fox TV series ''Roar,'' you were a wreck. Are you more confident now?
No! I'm the worst auditioner, really, really bad. I mean, you're being judged and I'm just so aware of it that it consumes me. I can't relax, I'm tied in knots, so the voice is very taut and tense. You're so aware that you're acting 'cause you're sitting across from this lady with a piece of paper who's going, ''I'm. Going. To. Shoot. You. If. You. Don't. Blah, blah, blah,'' in this emotionless voice. It's foul. I hate it.

You've played a modern Petruchio in ''10 Things I Hate About You,'' a knight, a soldier. What's your role in ''The Four Feathers,'' with Wes Bentley and Kate Hudson, like -- another big adventure?
Any child that would dream of being this character would be twisted. He's accused of being a coward. He's not. But society deems him one, because he hands in his resignation the night they're going off to the Sudan to fight.

Yet this is something like the fifth remake of the classic wartime coming of age story -- it's a story about courage, isn't it?
It's very cool. The director, Shekhar Kapur (''Elizabeth'') is brilliant. Shakhar, shaky. Salt shaker. He's an intense man, demands a lot from you, 24 hours, seven days a week without fail for the entire shoot, total commitment. So your head is just FRIED, but it's worth it. Four months in Morocco! I didn't get a day off on the whole shoot.

You, not Mel Gibson, were on the cover of Vanity Fair when ''The Patriot'' came out. How has life been different since then?
I was really slapped with the change when I went back home for two weeks. My hometown, Perth, is tiny -- 2 million people -- and it's the most isolated city in the world. So it's a big deal if you're from there and you're in this industry. It was a shock. Every move I made was written down and documented and released the next day on the front page of every f---ing paper. You kind of want to feel that if there's one place in the world that is always the same, it's your hometown or the town you grew up in. And it's gone now.

How do you deal with intrusive people?
You have to find the comedy in it. People around me don't realize how funny their reactions to me are and how funny everyone else is. Last night in New York, I went out to some bar and this big dude came up to me and stands like THIS close to my face shouting, ''ARE YOU HEATH LEDGER, ARE YOU HEATH LEDGER, ARE YOU HEATH?'' over and over and over again, until I was like ''Yes!'' And then he was like, ''WERE YOU IN 'THE PATRIOT'?'' Really obnoxious. So I just turned around to him and explained, like I do all the time, ''What would you think if just a complete f---ing stranger comes right up to you and gets in your face?'' Regardless of who it is, there's no excuse. If someone's an asshole, they're an asshole. I don't tolerate it. I'm polite about it. But I don't tolerate it.

Other actors say that being a celebrity is like becoming public property. True?
Exactly. It's like you're eating dinner in a restaurant and someone asks if they can take a photo with you and you explain, ''No, I'm out relaxing, I'm not working.'' And they're looking at you like, ''But... what? Aren't you just like that chair over there? I can take a photo of that chair. It's mine! It's ours!'' Whatever. I'm not really that bothered about it, I guess. I'm just talking about it because you asked.

Originally posted May 10, 2001

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Oh, What a Knight

WITH A KNIGHT'S TALE, CAN HEATH LEDGER SHED HIS ARMOR FOR A JOUST WITH FAME?

By Dave Karger | May 18, 2001

Heath Ledger will always remember the day he saw the poster for A Knight's Tale. The young Australian actor, who made a splash in the U.S. costarring in last summer's The Patriot, was in London working 18-hour days on the period adventure Four Feathers when the one-sheet arrived. There he saw his own eyes, larger than life, staring back at him, with the words ''HE WILL ROCK YOU'' emblazoned below his steely face. And he realized the advertising blitz for a $40 million enterprise would be all about...him.

''I got really nervous. I think I started shaking,'' recalls Ledger, who, months later, is clearly still uncomfortable with being the focus of Columbia Pictures' marketing campaign. ''Sure, the story is based around this knight's character, but it's about a group of people. It's an ensemble piece -- it always was....It was like, F -- -! I've done all this work, but ultimately, these guys are making decisions that could either really make or break my career. And it's out of my hands.''

Heath Ledger, welcome to superstardom. Whether he likes it or not, A Knight's Tale, about a British commoner who impersonates a master jouster, has been positioned as a teen-idol-making vehicle for Ledger, akin to what William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet was for Leonardo DiCaprio in 1996. Like that film, A Knight's Tale is a classic story featuring anachronistic flourishes -- in this case contemporary music and dialogue -- that's targeted squarely at younger audiences. And although Ledger perceives the movie as an ensemble piece -- his character, William Thatcher, does have a ragtag band of buddies -- the 22-year-old actor is the face on the billboards, trailer, and TV ads. And then there's that poster.

Which isn't to say Ledger isn't deserving of the attention. As Thatcher (and his royal alter ego, Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein), he sings, dances, romances, and, of course, jousts. And the studio is banking on the hope that in two-plus hours, a new Leo -- or at least a new action hero -- just might be born.

Columbia execs have no problem admitting that they're pinning one of their two summer tent poles (the other being July's Julia Roberts romantic comedy, America's Sweethearts) on Ledger's hunky mug. ''We went through various choices [for the poster],'' says Jeff Blake, the studio's president for worldwide marketing and distribution. ''But I gotta admit, when it came to putting a head of armor on that image, it just didn't seem like a good idea.''

Indeed, even the film's writer-director feels the role fits Ledger like a metal glove. ''In the movie he plays that character, but he's also playing Heath Ledger,'' says Brian Helgeland, the L.A. Confidential co-screenwriter who made his directorial debut with 1999's Payback. ''I mean, Clint Eastwood plays Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson plays Mel Gibson. Bruce Willis is a movie star because people like that Bruce Willis persona. You look at Heath and you feel like you know him, even though you don't.''

At New York City's Regency Hotel bar, the extremely fidgety Ledger is shredding his cocktail napkins. Sitting with a Camel Light in one hand and a Heineken in the other, the surprisingly tall (6'3") actor lets go of those vices only to grab a handful of crayons and doodle urgently on the white paper squares that rip apart from the force of his strokes. "I have very little patience. I get bored really quickly," says Ledger, whose mania is reminiscent of Mel Gibson on a talk-show couch, only jacked up a few notches (and with a lot more F-words). "I have ADD, I'm convinced."

It was that impatience that caused Ledger, the oldest son of Kim, an engineer, and Sally, a French tutor, to develop a love for acting and dancing while studying at Guildford Grammar School in his hometown of Perth. "I hated the school," he says. "It was about teaching kids how to fire semiautomatic weapons. It was breeding an army for the country. It was like 'Be proud for the school, fight for the school.' And I wasn't falling into that f---ing system. I'm not a patriot to a flag; I'm a patriot to my family. I found myself getting A's from the teachers that I really loved and f---ing failing miserably with the people I didn't."

After graduating at 16, Ledger cured his restlessness with a 2,700-mile soul-searching road trip to Sydney, which he knew was home to Australia's entertainment scene. "If I was going to portray a person or an emotion, I had to at least be able to portray myself," he says, adding, "I had 80 cents in the bank account. So I had to get a job." After appearing in a handful of Aussie productions, he landed the lead role in the 1997 Fox adventure series Roar. Though it was considered a Braveheart rip-off and canceled after one season, the show helped lead to bigger roles in 1999's 10 Things I Hate About You and last year's Revolutionary War drama The Patriot, in which he played Mel Gibson's son.

When Columbia execs saw early footage of The Patriot, they realized Ledger could carry his own film. "From the time I read the [Knight's Tale] script, he was always the person that we wanted," says studio chairman Amy Pascal. "We offer him everything." That includes the lead role in the upcoming Spider-Man, which Ledger declined. "I just don't care for comics," he says. "Never have. Never cared for Spider-Man. It would have been stealing someone else's dream." The role eventually went to Tobey Maguire.

Ledger sees his relationship with the studio a bit differently from Pascal. "I was their investment," he says bluntly. "They saw me and they invested money in me in The Patriot and said, 'Okay, let's pop him out in that, let's get another product, let's promote it, and let's bring in the bucks.' Slightly f---ing frustrating. It's an intimidating move on their part." Pascal responds: "I don't see him as a product. He's at a time where he's having to sell a movie that is mostly on his back, which is a scary thing the first time you do it."

Though he may sound like the reluctant superstar, Ledger insists he's simply being realistic. "People [at Columbia] are really worried right now," he continues. "It's called insurance. 'See, [the film] is tracking!' They're so all about their digits that they forget about word of mouth and trusting in a good film.... I've seen the movie and I loved it, so we all are successful." Admits Columbia's Blake, "Let's face it: When you look at the competition--The Mummy Returns and Pearl Harbor--there's no question we want to compete and survive. So we're being aggressive."

Part of the studio's aggressiveness involved asking Ledger to embark on a 12-city North American promotional tour. "I'm fighting that. It's a negotiation process," says Ledger, who eventually agreed to a scaled-down version of the trip. "I flew from Perth to Sydney, the next day to L.A., the next day to Dallas, the next day to Atlanta, the next day to Chicago, and the next day to New York," he says. "I think that's compromising." While Blake says Ledger is "certainly doing what we need him to do," it's not without a fight. Says the actor, "You've got to stop and say, 'Well, no, I'm not a politician.'"

Maybe not, but Ledger has become something of a punchline--if only to his close friends. "You should hear the f---ing messages I have on my answering machine," he groans. "'You gonna rock me, man?' I'm just getting so much f---ing flak from them, it's not funny." (One can only imagine the ribbing had he accepted that Spider-Man role.)

Perhaps to avoid such pigeonholing, Ledger's follow-up projects will veer far away from teen territory. In Four Feathers (based on the same book as the 1939 film), from Elizabeth director Shekhar Kapur, he plays a British military officer who is viewed as a coward when he resigns before a battle. "It's deep, deep, deep," says the actor. "It's not a movie that teenagers are supposed to come in and understand. It's, like, beyond that." As Miramax cochairman Harvey Weinstein, who's one of Four Feathers' producers, puts it, "This is 'Say goodbye to your one-minute moment of Heath Ledger, Teen Idol.' He wanted to lose that image and take on a tougher role." Later this month, the actor will head to Louisiana for two weeks of shooting opposite Billy Bob Thornton in Monsters Ball, the story of a father and son who work on death row.

As promising as Ledger's career looks now, there was a time when Hollywood didn't consider him the next big thing. A few years ago, Weinstein, who has made a career out of nurturing young talent like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, rejected Ledger for a lead role in a still-uncast European soccer flick called Calcio. "Oh yeah, isn't that ironic?" Ledger says with a grin. "Thanks, Harvey!" Both parties admit they needed to clear the air before shooting began on Four Feathers. "He joked about it in his kind of passive-aggressive way," says Ledger. Weinstein cracks, "I said, 'I don't even know whether I saw [your screen test] or not; that's how good you were, Heath!'....He's brilliant in all his movies," Weinstein adds quickly, "but even he admits he's not the best at auditions."

For now, Ledger professes indifference to A Knight's Tale's eventual box office victory or defeat. "If the movie comes out and it bombs, it's not my money that's going to be lost," he says. "And what that does to my career, I don't really care. If it's the end of it, then fine. I came in, had a sniff, and left. It's that sort of ruthlessness I guess you just have to have to be able to brush that off."

He's also had to fend off considerable tabloid interest in his love life, spurred on by a relationship with an actress nine years his senior. Ledger met Boogie Nights star Heather Graham in Prague last summer while he was shooting A Knight's Tale and she was filming the upcoming Jack the Ripper thriller From Hell; they've been together since. "It's funny," says Ledger, explaining his attraction to more mature women (previous girlfriends include Roar costar Lisa Zane, in her mid-30s when they dated four years ago). "You find a lot of women, when they get older--older than I am, anyhow--they don't have to pretend to be older anymore. So they go back to being young."

So, what if A Knight's Tale does turn him into a Leo-size luminary? Again, Ledger professes indifference. "A lot of people think ambition or success and they think dollars," Ledger says. "My ambition is all in my head. I'm on a f---ing journey. I'm on a walkabout. It's about collecting wisdom of emotions and heart and self and understanding. Being absolutely comfortable with your body and life and the earth, sun, and moon being the only truths. That's what my success is, getting underneath that." For once, he stops doodling. "At the f---ing end of the day, that's the only thing you're going to carry with you when you die." Good luck fitting that on a poster.

Originally posted May 18, 2001 Published in issue #596 May 18, 2001

From Oh, What a Knight
I especially like this portion:

"A lot of people think ambition or success and they think dollars," Ledger says. "My ambition is all in my head. I'm on a f---ing journey. I'm on a walkabout. It's about collecting wisdom of emotions and heart and self and understanding. Being absolutely comfortable with your body and life and the earth, sun, and moon being the only truths. That's what my success is, getting underneath that." For once, he stops doodling. "At the f---ing end of the day, that's the only thing you're going to carry with you when you die."

Ladies Heath held hands with - I just adore how he cocooned his lady friends' hands:
Naomi Watts from August 2002 to May 2004. Met doing Ned Kelly I think.
Heather Graham met in Prague, while Heath was filming A Knight's Tale, she filming Jack the Ripper thriller
Lisa Zane met doing Roar together
Michelle Williams met doing Brokeback Mountain

A quote of Heath that I especially like:
...“The power of belief, in a sense — it’s one of the strongest of all. And like religion, if you strongly believe in something, it comes true and it becomes a reality. In acting, I find that as well. If you believe it, you discover a truth and it’s quite spiritual…. Along that path, in discovering that character, you discover a lot about yourself.” end quote ~ I so love this.