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Heath Ledger: His Last Costar Reflects

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I'm only familiar with the broad strokes of the plot for Doctor Parnassus.
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER: So were we all. [Laughs] I kept teasing Terry about that all the time. A lot of it is set down [broadly] and then improvised. A lot of the happenings are magical, and wonderfully Gilliam-esque and obscure. It's sort of the Faust story in modern terms. Doctor Parnassus, whom I play, is sort of a modern-day Faust, who sells his soul to the devil. It's full of visitations into another world, a rather Narnia-like world. Heath was playing a sort of young mountebank who comes upon the scene. It's rather difficult to describe the plot. It's a sort of wonderful yarn of fantasy, sometimes very funny. Heath [was playing] this young charlatan who's brilliant at fooling people.

And Heath's character would appear in various guises?
Heath was a harlequin in one scene, a tramp in another. His character steals a lot of the costumes that my character's troupe have managed to hang on to, though they're on their last legs. He's rather like a younger version of my character — a magician who takes family on tour and invites the public to go through a mirror into this other world, the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. How can I describe it? He's an interloper, who of course falls for the daughter. Or the daughter falls for him, I can't quite follow it.

Like Johnny Depp, Heath had a strong reaction early on to being packaged as a ''heartthrob'' and he fought very strongly against that. He didn't want to be pigeonholed and stereotyped and turned into a commodity.
That's quite right. He stuck up for what were the right parts, and that's very commendable. He didn't succumb to any of those cheap temptations, and throwing himself into a huge variety of roles.

Was his daughter or anyone else from his family able to be on the set at all, to come and see him?
No, no, no. Just his driver and his friend from Ireland who was helping him. The last day, the last night [Saturday, Jan. 19] we were all working, and then he flew to New York, as I did, the next day. We weren't on the same plane, but he flew early, and we were looking forward to continuing on.

And you were scheduled to regroup in Vancouver next week?
Yeah. I don't dare say what will happen until we've talked with Terry [Gilliam]. Probably nobody will know until the end of this week what's going to happen. I spoke to Terry yesterday. We're all in shock, but he particularly, of course.... It's just awful. Quite shocking, because it's so incredible. I just left a very laughing, happy fellow, practically a few minutes ago.