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Back in Hollywood, he now scored a part most young actors would kill for. 10 Things I Hate About You, co-starring teen-of-the-moment Julia Stiles, was a broad-stroke rewrite of Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew, set in High School. Stiles would play the beautiful but difficult shrew who must be persuaded to go to the prom so her younger sister can also attend. Thus the sister's boyfriend hires class maverick Ledger, a rebel with a winning smile, to steal Stiles' heart and take her to the dance. Naturally, after a series of verbal sparrings, they fall for one another, then she discovers the plot and, well, you can guess the rest. It was charming fare and a great role for Ledger who got to sing and dance as well as spar, at one point coming on like his hero Gene Kelly as he cavorts around the raised seating on the sports field, serenading Stiles with the accompaniment of the school's marching band. That 10 Things more than doubled its money at the US box office made him all the more marketable.Ledger's next outing would be another success. This was A Knight's Tale, written and directed by Brian Helgeland who'd won an Oscar for his LA Confidential screenplay. Here Ledger would play a squire who, his livelihood threatened when his master dies, illegally takes on the mantle of knight and, abetted by a crew of friends and Paul Bettany's hilariously flamboyant Geoffrey Chaucer, battles evil Rufus Sewell for a jousting title and the hand of a nobleman's daughter. Blessed with a brilliantly inappropriate rock soundtrack, it was hugely silly but impressively romantic, its charm not lessened by a controversy over its poster when Columbia were found to have made up the glowing review by fictitious journalist David Manning. Ah, that poster. Ledger would be horrified by the wannabe star status it afforded him, feeling the "He will rock you" tagline put too much emphasis on an actor who had yet to really prove himself. Still, the movie was a hit and it would bring Ledger another glamorous girlfriend in Heather Graham, 9 years his senior. They'd meet in Prague where he was filming A Knight's Tale and she was making From Hell with Johnny Depp.
Ledger would remain on horseback for his next picture, The Four Feathers, already successfully adapted from AEW Mason's novel in 1939 and 1978 and this time directed by Shekhar "Elizabeth" Kapur. Ledger would take the lead role as Harry Faversham who refuses to fight with the British army in 1875 Sudan and instead resigns his commission so he can remain with his lover, Kate Hudson. This of course leads to public disgrace and, having received the titular feathers from his friends and fiancee, who think him a bally coward, he takes off for Sudan on his own and shadows his regiment, dashingly rescuing them from all manner of danger. It was riproaring stuff, but a financial disaster that might have blighted Ledger's fledgling career had it not been for one screaming stroke of luck it brought him. Co-star Wes Bentley felt in desperate need of a break but was contracted to shoot Monster's Ball immediately after The Four Feathers. He asked Ledger to take his part and spare him the wrath of the studios and this Ledger did, at obscenely short notice taking over the role of Sonny Grotowski, the sensitive son of prison guard Billy Bob Thornton. Unable to stand the jibes of his father and racist grandfather Peter Boyle, and painfully disturbed by the hideous work he's expected to carry out on Death Row, he blows himself away, thus acting as a catalyst for Thornton's own redemption. It was a small part, but pivotal and Ledger, for the first time, showed he had it in him to be a genuine character actor.
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Biography 
