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Heath Ledger got one of his most famous roles with an effortless, in seconds.
The director of “10 things I hate about you,” Gil Junger recalled in an interview on Friday that he was desperate to find his protagonist for the 1999 romantic comedy, and had already audited hundreds of young actors when a bigger book entered the room.
What happened next, he told Entertainment Weekly, was pure “magic.”
“I’m very demanding,” Junger told The Outlet. “I had already read 253 guys: 253 guys! And then Marcia Ross, Disney’s casting’s head, said: ‘Look, this next child, I don’t know him. It is a favor for an agent that I respect. Then, if not good, just stop it and send it on his way.'”
Ledger had already established himself as an actor in his native Australia at that time with papers in several television series, but he was still very unknown in the United States, Junger recalled on Friday that the option of hurrying through his audition, however, disappeared immediately.
“Don’t forget, I’ve been launching for months and I haven’t had the guy yet,” he told EW. “And this is the honest truth of God, in the life of my parents: he took three steps to the room, and my thought was: ‘If this son of a bitch can read English, I will choose it.'”
Ledger’s performance as the mysterious new high school student, Patrick Verona, possibly turned it into a star and practically presented it to the American public. His chemistry with Julia Stiles, who interpreted her love interest, turned Ledger into a good -faith pink.
The film -centered film, which is essentially a recount of “The Taming of The Shrew” by William Shakespeare, has become a basic element of romantic comedy for fans of a certain age. Ledger went to a meteoric ascent to fame, but died from an overdose of accidental drugs in 2008.
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The “Dark Knight” star posted an academy prize for its villain in the Batman movie as the Joker. Ledger, who shared a child with his partner Michelle Williams actor, continues to hypnotize fans to this day, both for his work and for his kindness outside the screen.
“I simply had a different magnetism than I once felt,” Junger told EW. “It was undeniable.”
“If there are old souls, I must have been elderly because I only had one way about him: he was only 17 years old and yet he was so safe and loving and wanted to be the best thing it could be,” he continued. “He was an incredible young man.”