{"id":2153,"date":"2008-02-06T13:06:56","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T21:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2008-02-06T13:07:22","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T21:07:22","slug":"aussie-actor-heath-ledger-reminded-americans-how-to-be-strong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=2153","title":{"rendered":"Aussie Actor Heath Ledger Reminded Americans How To Be Strong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill writes for Jewcy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The tragic death of Heath Ledger — just determined to be an overdose — has robbed Hollywood of one of its Australian stand-ins for American machismo. Never mind the trade deficit, or even Barack Obama’s "moral deficit"; Hollywood is suffering from a macho deficit, and it’s having to turn to the land of beer-swilling, sheep-shearing men-in-denim to find its cowboys and cads.<\/p>\n

When Hollywood first flirted with all things Aussie in the 1980s, it was a bit of a po-mo joke. "Look at Crocodile Dundee with his big shiny knife and taste for lager – how quaint!" laughed cinema audiences. It’s no joke today. At a time when American stars have been feminised, preened and plucked, it’s Australia that is providing the muscle for the grittier acting jobs.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Ledger had joined Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Eric Bana as a Real Bloke who could play gruff cowboys, lascivious bastards or any other role that required the leading man to have hair on his chest. In his breakthrough film 10 Things I Hate About You, a high-school spin on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, Ledger looked like he had been shuttled in from another planet rather than simply another hemisphere. Where the hairless, super-tanned jock (Andrew Keegan) was boringly arrogant, and the geek with a crush (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was predictably nervous, Ledger’s scruffy, unkempt and slurry-voiced Patrick Verona was a complex macho character – nasty to begin with, but later opened up by the love of a good woman. The director even allowed him to keep his Aussie accent, as if to accentuate this untidy, unruly character’s exoticness amid the cardboard cut-out boys and girls of a typical high-school movie.<\/p>\n

In later films, Ledger played American rather than Australian; his rugged Down Under temperament meant he was frequently more convincing as a manly American than many of the prim and waxed actors who are actually American-born. He even played cowboy better. In Brokeback Mountain, <\/em>Ledger’s tortured and mumbling Ennis Del Mar is far more believable than all-American Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist. (In one scene in that film, Ledger and Gyllenhaal were required to leap naked off a cliff into a lake. Ledger did it, but Gyllenhaal was replaced by a stuntman because he is scared of heights. If you want an actor to take risks, look Down Under.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As I’ve often said, Australians play the best poofs.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill writes for Jewcy: The tragic death of Heath Ledger — just determined to be an overdose — has robbed Hollywood of one of its Australian stand-ins for American machismo. Never mind the trade deficit, or even Barack Obama’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[182,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-hollywood"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t