Since his death last week we’ve heard any number of touching stories about Heath Ledger, from his devotion to his young daughter to his fierce passion for the movies he worked on, right up until the final days of his life. One of the most touching tributes thus far comes from Chris Nolan, who directed Ledger as The Joker in the upcoming The Dark Knight. Writing in Newsweek, Nolan says that Ledger “was bursting with creativity. It was in his every gesture.”
He describes a series of decisions on the set of The Dark Knight that led to the Joker showing up onscreen on a skateboard. Nolan worried that Batman fans would scoff at the idea of a skateboarding Joker, but even the younger crew members took up skateboarding soon after Ledger did it on the set. “If you'd asked those kids why they had chosen to bring their boards to work, they would have answered honestly that they didn't know. That's real charisma—as invisible and natural as gravity. That's what Heath had.”
Nolan’s tribute is full of little details from his time spent with Ledger, and doesn’t speak in the vague, sweeping terms that many tributes have used in the last week. Nolan clearly admired his actor, both for his talent and for the gentle, gracious attitude he brought with him on the set. Nolan mentions that he’s editing The Dark Knight now, and you can only imagine the pain he feels each day in the editing room, studying the face of a young man gone too soon.
Read the whole article here. It’s short, and better-written and more affecting than nearly everything I’ve read about Ledger thus far.
