10 Things I Hate About You Director Reveals How Heath Ledger Beat Out More Than 200 Other Actors

Heath Ledger landed one of his most famous roles with effortless charm — within seconds.

Gil Junger, the director of 10 Things I Hate About You, recalled in an interview last week that he was desperate to find his leading man for the 1999 rom-com, and had already auditioned hundreds of young actors when a then-unknown Heath entered the room.

What happened next, he told Entertainment Weekly, was pure “magic”.

“I’m very picky,” Junger told the outlet. “I had already read 253 guys — 253 guys! And then Marcia Ross, the head of Disney casting, said, ‘Look, this next kid, I don’t know him. It’s a favour for an agent I respect. So if he’s no good, just stop it and send him on his way’.”

Heath had already established himself as an actor in his native Australia at the time, with roles in various television series, but was still very much unknown in the US.

Junger recalled that the option to rush through his audition, however, vanished immediately.

“Don’t forget, I’ve been casting for months and did not have the guy yet,” he told EW. “And this is the God’s honest truth, on my parents’ life: He took three steps into the room, and my thought was, ‘If this fucker can read English, I’m going to cast him’.”

Heath’s performance as the mysterious new high school student Patrick Verona arguably made him a star and practically introduced him to American audiences. His chemistry with Julia Stiles, who played his love interest, meanwhile, turned him into a bona fide heartthrob.

The teen-centric film, which is essentially a retelling of William Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew, has since become a rom-com staple for fans of a certain age. Heath went on to have a meteoric rise to fame, but died from an accidental drug overdose in 2008.

The Dark Knight star posthumously won an Academy Award for his villainous turn in the Batman film as the Joker. Heath, who shared a child with fellow actor Michelle Williams, continues to mesmerise fans to this day — both for his work and for his kindness off-screen.

“He just had a magnetism unlike I’ve ever felt,” Junger told EW. “It was undeniable.”

“If there’s old souls, he must have been centuries old because he just had a way about him — he was only 17, and yet he just was so confident and loving and wanted to be the best he could be,” he continued. “He was just an incredible young man.”