One cool cowboy

Heath Ledger is driving me home.

Movie stars don’t usually drive journalists anywhere, especially distances that require knowledge of rules of New York streets.

But this Brooklyn transplant of five months powers his car – a blue BMW – with the leisurely assurance of a cowboy on the range.

The “Brokeback Mountain” star is slung back in his seat, his long legs stretched out in ratty jeans, a hood pulled over his dusty brown hair. In movies, the high cheekbones slash across the screen. In person, he merely looks indistinct, curiously unassuming.

Save for several potent minutes in the indie release “Monster’s Ball,” there’s little in Ledger’s resume – from his American debut in “10 Things I Hate About You” to the Arthurian romp “A Knight’s Tale” and the action-adventure “The Patriot” – that prepares the audience for the depth of his Ennis Del Mar, the cowboy at the center of “Brokeback Mountain.”

Based on an E. Annie Proulx short story, the film, directed by Ang Lee and shot in Calgary, Alberta, is the tale of two dirt-poor cowboys (Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) and their love for each other, carefully suppressed and hidden from the world around them.

Ever since it won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2005, the film has been known in Hollywood as “the gay cowboy movie.”

As Ennis, Ledger emits the kind of loneliness that seeps into your bones like the dampness of a bad winter cold. He’s unvarnished, understated and stoic, fiercely determined to keep his longing and fury and grief pent up for the rest of his life. Catharsis isn’t permitted in his unforgiving cowboy world.

“When I met him, the moment I saw him, that was it. He nailed it,” Lee says.

“He’s the person that’s the best to carry that Western brooding mood – elegiac and fearful and violent, all the complexities, all the poetic qualities.”

Ledger grew up in western Australia, in Perth – the “most isolated city in the world,” he says. His father designed racing engines, but his parents split up when he was 10, and he and his sisters went back and forth between the two homes, moving every two weeks.

His ease on horseback – and directors’ penchant for casting him as someone who rides – might owe something to the fact that his stepfather owned a farm.

“I used to chop wood. That was my chore,” Ledger says. “I grew up around horses. Funny enough, I didn’t start to ride horses until I had to. Then I couldn’t get off horseback.”

He says he essentially fell into acting at the instigation of his sister’s agent, who got him cast in an Australian TV show. Other TV series followed, on which he played a gay cyclist (“Sweat”) and a medieval prince (“Roar”).

Unfortunately, the more challenging films – pricey epics like “The Four Feathers” and “The Brothers Grimm” – wound up more ambitious than successful, either artistically or commercially.

“I’ve known Heath for a long time. I always thought he was underserved in a lot of the roles he did,” says James Schamus, Lee’s producing partner and co-president of Focus Features, which is releasing “Brokeback Mountain.”

Ledger knew from the moment the Larry McMurtry-Diana Ossana script for “Brokeback Mountain” dropped into his lap that he wanted to play Ennis. He even told the filmmakers he’d fly to China just to meet Lee.

“I enjoyed the stillness, and I enjoyed the lack of words on the page,” he says. “There was so much information about him in the short story, I knew how to play those silent moments.”

In playing Ennis, Ledger absorbed his utter desolation.

“The whole shooting experience for me was incredibly lonely,” he says. “Whether or not Ang created that environment for me to work and live in, or I created it for myself – it’s a lonely story, so it’s hard not to take it home with you and feel lonely.”

He admits that both he and Gyllenhaal were “very, very nervous” about the gay love scenes – which are straightforward and unusually frank. (Indeed, there were those in Hollywood who thought that the two young heartthrobs could potentially alienate their teenage fans by playing gay.)

“It’s not something that we’d searched for in everyday life. But we’re pretty sensible people, Jake and I. We realized we’re just two people,” says Ledger.

“We realized it’s necessary for the story – the level of intimacy had to be portrayed to increase the level of heartache for the story. It’s easy to say it was difficult and hard, but it’s really awkward having to do a love scene with anyone – whether it’s a guy or a girl. There’s a guy with the boom standing over you. It’s always awkward.”

Ledger recovered by flying to Venice for six months to play the title role in “Casanova” (also opening in area theaters today) – as breezy and romantic as “Brokeback” is meticulous and spare.

“I don’t really like to do the same thing twice,” he admits. “I like to do something I fear. I like to set up obstacles and defeat them.

“I like to be afraid of the project. I always am. When I get cast in something, I always believe I shouldn’t have been cast. There’s a huge amount of anxiety that drowns out any excitement I have toward the project. Pretty much any time I’ve signed on to a movie, I’ve tried to get out of it.”

Ledger goes so far as to call his agent with his plans to escape.

“He knows it’s a routine,” he says. “I know it’s a routine. It feels like it’s necessary to put myself down. It inspires me to focus more and work harder.”