Heath costars with Kate Hudson in The Four Feathers.
- Are Women Directors
Losing Ground? [article] - Celebs in Bad
Slasher Movies [article] - Girl's Guide to the
2007 Summer Movie... [photo gallery] - Movie Girls Just
Want to Be Pretty [article] - Wonder Woman's
Superhero Comeback [article]
Heath Ledger says the bravest thing he ever did was leave his family and friends to drive across Australia in search of fame and fortune. Ledger legend has it that after finishing high school a year early, 16-year-old Heathcliff (he and his older sister, Catherine, called Kate, were named for the star-crossed lovers of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights) persuaded a friend to join him on the 2,600-mile journey from Perth to Sydney, where he hoped to get his foot in the door of the acting world.
It's the actor's latest role -- as conflicted young soldier Harry Feversham in The Four Feathers -- that begs the question of bravery: Directed by Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth), the story, which was first committed to film in 1921, is a chronicle of one man's inner struggle with identity, cowardice and courage amid Britain's imperialist campaign in Sudan in the 1930s.
In spite of an assured and tidy future as a military man and husband (his fetching fiancée is played by Kate Hudson), when Harry is called to battle, he becomes paralyzed by a crisis of conscience and resigns his commission, shocking his friends and family, who abandon him to his despair. But when he hears that his regiment, which includes his childhood friend Jack Durrance (American Beauty's Wes Bentley), has come under attack, Harry travels to the unforgiving desert land, befriending a Sudanese mercenary (Djimon Honsou) and disguising himself as an Arab so he can go behind enemy lines to rescue his fallen comrades.