How Heath Ledger Outacted 253 Others to Secure His Iconic "10 Things I Hate About You" Role
's breakout performance as Patrick Verona in the 1999
teen rom-com
"
10 Things I Hate About You
" is now mythic, yet the story behind his securing the role is as delightful as the performance itself.
The Audition That Changed Everything
Director
Gil Junger
recalled that Ledger was a new face at the time, and the casting process had been exhausting: he had already auditioned 253 actors for the role of Patrick Verona.
Disney
's casting chief, Marcia Ross, had brought in Ledger as a favor to a respected agent, recalled Junger, with little hope that he would get it.
But, the moment Ledger entered the room, he owned it completely. Junger remembered:
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"He took three steps into the room, and my thought was, 'If this f---er can read English, I'm going to cast him.''
Even before a word was spoken, Ledger's soulfulness led Junger to think that he had found his Patrick Verona. "He just had a magnetism unlike I've ever felt. It was undeniable. He just was so confident and loving and wanted to be the best he could be. He was just an incredible young man,' mentioned Junger.
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Ledger was only 17, with a rather older and more confident personality. Of Ledger's first day on set, the director spoke about his bohemian attire-Frye boots, torn olive green leather pants, a white leather belt, a wacky shirt, and a beanie-that only made him cooler and more authentic. Junger added, "He just had this magic where you could just put anything on him, maybe even paint it, and he'd be incredibly cool, because the kid you saw in the movie, that's who he was. He was just an incredible human."
A Breakout Role
Ledger's coming into stardom as the mysterious and charming Patrick Verona, hired to woo Julia Stiles' character Kat, was a career-defining role. The film's blend of humor, love story, and pop culture moments- like Ledger's bleacher drama in the high school- earned him a spot as a leading man in romance and set the stage for his future success in "A Knight's Tale," "Brokeback Mountain," and "The Dark Knight," for which he won a posthumous Oscar.
Junger's fondness for Ledger was so immense that he would even go out of his way to ride to location with him, simply to be in his company. Now, as the director works on a spiritual follow-up to "10 Things I Hate About You," he's made it a point to avoid an outright sequel out of respect for Ledger's memory and what worked so beautifully in the original.
Heath Ledger's casting wasn't a matter of reading lines-it was a matter of an instant, electric presence that separated him from a sea of other contenders.
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