On the cusp of
Brokeback mania, former Advocate editor Alonso
Duralde spoke frankly with Heath Ledger for the
magazine's January 17, 2006 cover story. Below is the
interview in its entirety, along with
Duralde's remembrances of the promising and
conflicted actor.
I had the good
fortune to meet Heath Ledger just once, at the 2005
Toronto Film Festival, the morning after Brokeback
Mountain premiered there. I had some trepidations about
speaking with the actor -- he was notoriously
press-shy, and he had arrived in Toronto having just
returned from the Venice Film Festival, where he had given
interview after interview to promote Brokeback,The Brothers Grimm, and Casanova, so I
figured by the time I got to him, he'd be utterly sick
of talking to journalists. But the soft-spoken,
thoughtful young man I met allayed any fears I had about
an unresponsive interviewee. Slightly hungover after a night
out with Terry Gilliam -- who had directed Ledger in
Grimm and directed him in his final film, The
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus -- Ledger
opened up to me about his career-making Brokeback
Mountain role, about his lifelong attitudes toward gays
and lesbians, and about his impending fatherhood.
We're all still a little shell-shocked by the loss of
this young, vibrant actor who seemed to have nothing
but one extraordinary performance after another waiting for
him. Looking back on this interview, it's sad to
remember just how vital and ambitious he was just a
few years ago:
Did you have gay friends tell you what a big deal
Brokeback Mountain is for queer
audiences? “Dude, this is gonna be major --
don’t fuck it up”?
I didn’t really need my friends to tell
me that. [Alonso laughs] I understood that
it’s an important story and one that hadn’t
really been told properly. But I knew there was a
certain responsibility.
There was an interview that Ang Lee gave at some
point in the production process where he said something
along the lines of “We can show
Ennis’s and Jack’s feelings for each other
through the sheepherding,” and I think a
lot of people got nervous that the movie would
back away from the physicality of the relationship,
which it certainly doesn’t. Was there any
kind of negotiating of those scenes, or were you
just thrown into it?
No, there had to be choreography involved,
purely because for Jake and me, it wasn’t a
situation where the director could just say, “OK, now
just have fun with this and just roll with it.” It
was delicately planned out. But we didn’t
really want to rehearse it either; we didn’t really
want to sit there and go through the motions as well. The
rest was just absolutely trusting the story --
convincing ourselves of the love and committing to it
100%. Had we done anything less, it wouldn’t have
done justice to the story.
Are you getting a lot of the “Eww, what’s
it like to kiss a guy?” questions? The
straight media loves that stuff.
Yeah. Yeah, the straight world seems to be
really stuck up on that. That’s fine --
it’s not like I wasn’t prepared for it.
Now, you began your career playing a gay role on
Australian television, right?
[Laughs] Yeah!
How did you deal with the media then?
I can’t really remember. I actually
remember getting harassed on the street.
Really?
Yeah. [Chuckles] So I had small occasions
where I’d get bullied on the streets for it! But I
was never out to prove myself or my sexuality -- it
didn’t really bother me. I think if that was an
issue, I wouldn’t have done [that] show; I
wouldn’t have done this film.
Follow us on Twitter. 
Follow us on Facebook.
Page 1 of 3
Duralde, a Los Angeles-based writer, was
previously The Advocate's arts and
entertainment editor.