SEPTEMBER 1, 2009
HEATH Ledger proved a true romantic in his short life, as revealed in a new book by Janet Fife-Yeomans.
THE leading man heavily influences the mood of a shoot, and A Knight's Tale (which then rising star Heath Ledger filmed in 2000) was a "light and happy" set with an easy camaraderie between members of the cast. One diversion was Heather Graham. The actress who had stripped off to her roller-skates in Boogie Nights and starred opposite Mike Myers' Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me was in Prague shooting From Hell with Johnny Depp.
Heather was playing a prostitute living in London in the 1880s, when the streets were terrorised by Jack the Ripper. Like A Knight's Tale, the movie is livened up by contemporary music, rap from artists like Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z. But Heath and Heather had more in common than starring in ye olde movies featuring modern music.
He had split up with Christina (Cauchi). Heather was also single after a string of high-profile romances, including her Twin Peaks co-star Kyle MacLachlan and actor-producer-director James Woods. She had just come out of a three-year relationship with Ed Burns, from Saving Private Ryan.
The proverbial sparks flew when Heath and Heather met one night in a club in Prague, although it took a few months before their affair found its way into the gossip magazines. She was older than him by nine years, but Heath, then 21, wasn't counting. "She's my muse," he later said, rather romantically, demonstrating again that he was a real softie when it came to affairs of the heart. "She's a beautiful, beautiful girl. We make each other laugh. She's so funny, that's the key. It's fun. It's a good relationship, and a very truthful one." Heather called him the love of her life. "Heath is a great guy. I feel really protective of him, so I don't want to say too much. But he's an incredible, amazing person and I'm really lucky to know him."
Fresh from their Aussie adventure (the couple travelled to Heath's hometown of Perth before the film's US release), Heath and Heather strode the red carpet in New York at the premiere of A Knight's Tale in May.
They smiled and kissed up a storm, she in a clinging red number, he in a blue suit with razzle-dazzle braid around the edges of the jacket. A Knight's Tale did well at the box office, taking a total of $56 million in the US alone before it even made it on to DVD.
But, like the critics, romance is a fickle thing, and within a month it was good-bye Heather. Before Heath's next movies were released, there would be another woman gracing his arm, and again she was older than him, this time by 10 years. What was it about this lusty bachelor and older women?
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In 2002, Heath met co-star Naomi Watts while shooting the Australian film Ned Kelly, and the couple later stepped out in public together at the LA premiere of Watts' film, The Ring.
Naomi, in a barely-there, slashed-to-the-waist dress, gazed up at Heath, who ditched his bohemian wardrobe and scrubbed up well for the night in a black suit. He had even dropped his dark glasses, prompting speculation that he no longer needed to hide his emotions from the world.
"It is a new chapter. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world," said Naomi.
And well she might.
The passion that had been kindled on the set of Ned Kelly continued to smoulder on a Balinese holiday.
The couple left their luxury villa on the island just two weeks before the infamous nightclub bombing of October 2002 to return to their adopted home of LA where, for a time, they tried to keep their continuing romance a secret. Orlando Bloom often played decoy for the pair, arriving at the city's nightclubs with Heath, knowing that once inside the VIP room he would be dumped for Naomi.
Naomi, who had been sharing a tiny apartment with a female roommate, moved into Heath's mansion and acquired another best friend - Bob the Yorkshire terrier. Bob hung out with Heath's new cocker spaniel puppy, Ned. While Ned liked to play a bit of football, Bob liked his own company, but the two were good mates.
Gentle, smart and with a goofy sense of humour, Naomi was good for Heath. She was as relaxed as he was about his scruffy drama student attire.
"I love men who are comfortable with themselves and are happy to let their natural beauty radiate," she said.
"I hate guys who try too hard - with perfect hair, perfect bodies, perfect muscles that line up neatly. Vanity is a big turn-off. Girls can get away with that sort of self-possession, but I don't think guys can. I like the just-rolled-out-of-bed, just-happen-to-look-great kind of guy."
She could even live with the bright decor. "Yeah, he's got some pretty vivid colours. But as my interior-designer mum says, 'No colour, no heart'."
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Like Heath, she hated the phoniness around them, and was grateful for the "Aussie posse" in Hollywood.
"You certainly seek each other out, I think, because no one's got family in Los Angeles," she said. "Like in any circumstance, you yearn to be around like-minded people, people who have had similar experiences. It's not some exclusive 'club', like the papers have made it out to be. It's just lovely to have that grounding in a foreign land."
Naomi had grown up in a foreign land - Australia - and was the kind of independent woman Heath was attracted to. Naomi also had the all-important seal of approval from Heath's family.
While old blokes have been hanging out with young women for years, there was no hiding from the fact that once again Heath was trashing the trend.
Naomi and the 23-year-old Heath celebrated her 34th birthday, hugging and kissing after lunch at celebrity hangout The Ivy, the restaurant featured in the movie Get Shorty when Danny DeVito meets with John Travolta.
Perhaps she had more media training than Heath - or perhaps it was her more mature years - but Naomi was much more eloquent when answering pointed media questions.
There were no pouty moments or monosyllabic answers, even as she tried to deflect questions about their age difference with humour.
"Wait, wait? He's how old? And I'm how old?" she said when quizzed by veteran newswoman Barbara Walters. "I'm not so good with numbers, Barbara."
However, Naomi couldn't talk Heath into babies and marriage. She had made no secret of her desire for a family.
"My mother is dying for me to have children and, quite frankly, I've been dying for it since I was 19, but I hadn't met the right man," she told American Style magazine.
"It's interesting. At the age of 35, my career couldn't be going better, but we all know that fertility slows down at this point, so it's about making healthy choices. I really do want to experience having a baby."
Heath made it equally clear that while he couldn't see anything wrong with having children when he was young, he wasn't ready for them - or marriage - yet. It wasn't long after they cuddled up on the red carpet at the (2004) Academy Awards that Naomi moved her belongings and terrier Bob out of Heath's Los Feliz home for the last time. Friends said it had nothing to do with Naomi's getting clucky, but that the relationship had simply run its course after almost two years.
"They loved each other but, really, they never got the timing right. Just as Naomi was feeling comfortable about things, Heath wanted to do something else. They were never going to settle down, to use that old-fashioned term," said a friend. Naomi confirmed that, telling a reporter that while their break-up was sad and inevitable, "I think deep down we both knew there wasn't a forever plan".
Heath's womanising was also a factor. After professing that he hated parties, Heath had got off his self-confessed "lazy arse" and hit the LA nightclub scene with a vengeance. One night Naomi caught him in a booth at an LA nightclub flirting with Scarlett Johansson, who at 19 was closer to Heath's age than Naomi was. It led to a public and humiliating argument between Naomi and Heath.
Naomi had had enough. "Sources" were quoted as stating that Naomi thought Heath was immature and unruly, and that he made her "look stupid for being with him". Her publicist, Emma Cooper, who had partied with the couple after the Oscars, finally confirmed the split in May.
There was the usual pronouncement that "the couple remain close friends", which in this case was true. They did remain in touch, and friends said they were both "sweet" and "classy" people who had not wanted to hurt each other.
Heath fell for another co-star while filming Brokeback Mountain in 2004.
Once again, Heath mixed business with pleasure and fell for his leading lady, 24-year-old Michelle Williams.
Heath said that falling in love on set wasn't a cliche he worried about.
"If I cancel out the people I'm working with, I'm never going to meet anyone, because it's hard meeting people," he later said. "Inevitably the people I'm surrounded by are the people I'm working with most of the time.
"That's just the life that we live, so I'm never going to deny myself that opportunity. And it is a cliche, but it's not as common as you would think, and it was out of my hands too. It was too good to walk away from."
In the final week of December of that same year, Michelle joined Heath for Christmas in Australia.
He whisked her off for a romantic dinner and then to a ballet performance at the Opera House before they flew to Perth to spend Christmas with his family. They also managed to sneak up the east coast to the hippie haven of Byron Bay, which Heath had previously visited with Naomi. Byron is known as a mystical place - the only spot on the east coast where the sun sets over the ocean, because of the way the bay is configured. Shops are full of crystals and people wanting to read your aura.
It's a famous surfing spot, and the hinterland is full of lush valleys where people go to live alternative lifestyles. It was there that the couple conceived their baby, as Heath later revealed.
"It's very romantic. It's very spiritual," he said of Byron Bay.
Perhaps the similarity in their ages helped Heath and Michelle's relationship to move on so quickly.
"Very early on in our relationship, we talked about having babies together. I always knew I would be a young father," said Heath.
"We just fell very deeply into each other's arms. Our bodies definitely made those decisions for us. I mean, the second you acknowledge (having a child) as a possibility, the body just inevitably hits a switch and it happens."
Starting a family young in life seems to be a Ledger family tradition. Heath's parents were only in their mid-20s when they had Heath's sister Kate, and Kim was 28 when Heath was born.
While there is no chemical formula for falling in love, Michelle and Heath had many parallels in their lives. Neither took the safe and boring path. They lived bohemian lifestyles, yet they were both grounded, and both became movie stars seemingly despite their best efforts.
They also shared the good fortune of looks and talent, but neither chose the big-budget blockbusters which could have made them millions, instead building their careers on unpredictability.
They remained enthusiastic about becoming parents. At home, Heath and Michelle stuck some early ultrasound pictures up on their fridge. Heath was amazed that the baby's features were already formed: "It's just two little nostril holes and then the shape of the lips - it's Michelle's mouth. It's so bizarre. These little porcelain lips that are exactly the same shape as Michelle's. It's just adorable."
He was such a doting dad-to-be that he even wrote a list of things he wanted to say to his child. "I just need to meet her. I need to hold her," he said.
He was cooking up a storm, looking after his girlfriend who was "eating for two". "Italian is my forte," he said. "I'm into hand-making pasta now, hand-making gnocchi and fettuccine. There's flour everywhere in my kitchen. I like making a mess."
He and Michelle read literally dozens of baby books, and went to hypnobirthing classes before rejecting the technique, with Heath quipping, "I don't think we'll be throwing Michelle into a trance". They opted for a natural birth with a doula, a non-medical assistant.
When the baby arrived on October 28, 2005, weighing 2.83kg, it was Michelle who had picked the name, although it was appropriately Australian.
"I came up with it on the subway one day. It just fell from the sky and into my head. And I love, love the Roald Dahl book Matilda," said Michelle. "I didn't think about it at the time, but then afterwards, I was like, 'Yeah, that's the girl I want: reads lots of books and makes things move with her eyes'. That'll be my daughter for sure."
Heath said that like most new fathers, he had never felt so useless as after seeing Michelle give birth.
"For man, birth is the realisation that you're just a hopeless, useless specimen of life and witnessing this innate, primal strength within women can be such an intimidating experience," he said.
"When you come out of the birthing experience, you actually have a better understanding of how and why men have over-compensated in society by creating battles and wars and steroids, and why they go to the gym. It's because we want to be strong and tough, and we're not. And it's this endless quest to kind of find this strength that can equal women's.
Experiencing those nine months with Michelle was incredibly humbling, and I just relinquish all kinds of respect and power to her. She's incredible." It didn't take long for the realisation to sink in that babies were hard work, but that the rewards were more than worth it.
"It's going great," he said, when Matilda was four weeks old. "It's exhausting, but it's a pleasure waking up to your daughter. My life right now is - I wouldn't say reduced to food - but my duties in life are that I wake up, cook breakfast, clean the dishes, prepare lunch, clean those dishes, go to the market, get fresh produce, cook dinner, clean those dishes and then sleep if I can. I love it. I actually adore it."
Heath had lived out of a suitcase for years and never really taken root anywhere, but Matilda's birth appeared to go some way to settling his inbuilt restlessness.
"The level of synchronicity that's in my life now, with me and Michelle and now Matilda, (has) meant it's become everything to me - the most important thing I do. My child smiles up at me in the morning and that's it - I feel connected to life; this is what it's all about…there's something very cosmic about the experience of parenthood. Suddenly you get the right perspective and priorities," he said.
"It's marvellous - and the most remarkable experience I've ever had."
From A Family's Tale by Janet Fife-Yeomans
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