Ledger's potential
Coming off a trifecta of flops (Ned Kelly, Four Feathers, The Order), Ledger was hardly the kind of thoroughbred actor topping producers' wish lists. However, screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana had suggested him based on the potent combination of rage and vulnerability he brought to his bit part in Monster's Ball, which is what ultimately persuaded Lee to cast the actor without meeting him. Ledger felt he had nothing to lose. ''I would have been crazy to turn it down,'' the actor says, enjoying a mid-afternoon bottle of Bordeaux in the garden of his local Brooklyn café. ''Any anxiety toward doing it was manufactured through the industry. It obviously wasn't as big a deal for us, because we did it.''
A claim that was put to the test, since Lee wasn't up for doing double duty as anyone's sex therapist. ''I didn't care,'' says the director of any potential preproduction jitters about gay love scenes. ''They know what they're getting into. They'll just do it. The more I'd talk about it, the more embarrassed I'd get.''
NEXT PAGE: Offscreen romance
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