seeing the movie, not by listening to me talk or finding out anything about me," he says. Earlier this morning Ledger went on another morning TV show, where one of the anchors said to him, "Tell me about your personal life." He said to her, "Tell me about your personal life." The line of questioning ended there.

"I could do all the publicity in the world and do a lousy fucking job in the movie, and bang, that's it," he says. "And, likewise, the opposite: I could do no publicity but an amazing job in the movie, and I'd still get work, ya know what I mean? So that's what I am balancing, and that's what I'm fighting with."

Heath Ledger insists he couldn't care less about being a moviestar. That's why, after starring in 1999's 10 Things I Hate About You, a relatively smart remake of Taming of the Shrew aimed at the allowance crowd, he turned down myriad teenybopper projects. He could have become Freddie Prinze Jr., a man who never sniffed a turd that didn't smell like a flower, but preferred to sit and starve rather than do a bad job in a bad movie. His friends and family tried to convince him to work; they mistook his confidence for arrogance. But saying no proved far more shrewd than saying yes: The longer he held out, the more studios wanted him. Hollywood loves a tease.

"My family and agents were going, 'Are you fucking crazy?'" he recalls. "And I was like, 'No. It's not an