I met Heath Ledger in March 2001 when he was promoting A Knight's Tale during the round of publicity junkets in Los Angeles. The room smelled like smoke, probably because he was putting out one about every half hour, and he was squirming in a chair like a little kid who'd been scolded at daycare. Possibly because he was irritated at the prying questions all day about Heather Graham (whom he was dating at the time). Possibly because he'd been asked for the 100th time what it felt like to be on the cusp of movie stardom, as the giant poster for the movie was filled with his face, and his face only, with a shock of dreamboat-ish wavy blond hair.

The girls dug his wide smile and that Aussie baritone. At this point I knew him as the kid from that short-lived series Roar, co-starring Keri Russell, and later the paired with Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You and Mel Gibson's roguish son in The Patriot. While I sat uncomfortably through The Patriot in theaters, I did rather like Ledger on-screen, a young headstrong boy who defies his father to go to war.

I asked him first about that large poster that hung near his head like an omen. He, only 22 at the time, shifted and admitted he was intimidated by it. "It's an ensemble cast," he explained. "But at the end of the day, it's your mug up there."

And indeed, A Knight's Tale was a rather curious mix of medieval adventure and WWE, goblets and modern slang ("It's called a lance..... hell-O..."). The dance scene, in which Ledger and Shannyn Sossamon waltz properly, then bust a groove to David Bowie's "Golden Years," was particularly entertaining because Ledger truly appeared to be enjoying himself. He'd also gone balls-out serenading and dancing for Stiles in 10 Things. There'd been rumors he was eager to star in Moulin Rouge, but was ultimately passed over in favor of Ewan McGregor for being too young. Had he lived on, would we have seen Ledger in the next big-screen musical adaptation?

"[You should] have fun. Get up there and dance and sing. Dance as if no one’s watching," he enthused. "The reason that you dance and sing is to make the audience feel like they’re dancing and singing."

The problem was, after Knight's Tale underperformed, Ledger nearly self-destructed his own career, following a small but pivotal part in Monster's Ball with five flops in a row--an attempt, he later said, to stop the teen heartthrob scripts from coming in--before his simmering, subtle performance in Brokeback Mountain earned him all those comparisons to Brando. His relationship with co-star Michelle Williams, which was genuinely adorable, also landed him in a lot of "Stars... They're Just Like Us" spreads in Us Weekly. There was Heath, going grocery shopping. There was Heath, toting his baby daughter around Brooklyn. There was Heath, having a smoke.

While his Oscar-nominated role catapulted him to better selections--most recently the role of a younger Joker in The Dark Knight, due this summer--he was obsessed with the character, telling an interviewer it took such a toll on his him that he couldn't sleep, even when his body was exhausted. Reading that article, I remembered another thing he said during our interview, back when he was on the verge of celebrity."I love acting and I have a lot of fun," he said. "[Yet] as soon as that disappears, the fun and friendship I have just deteriorates... I’ll walk away. It’s not hard."

It sure would have been great to see how many more interesting performances Heath Ledger might've turned in before walking away.

-- Ellen Aticle From : www.amazon.com/daily