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Why I want to be Heath Ledger

Allens Fantales: Australian chewy choc-caramel lollies with biographies of celebrities on the wrappers.

They work like this:

Person 1, chewing, & speaking awkwardly with a mouth full of chewy choc-caramel, reading their lolly wrapper: “So. I got Madonna. That whore. Did you know her second name was Louise? So who’d you get?”

Person 2, sucking the chocolate off their lolly, trying to swallow chewy caramel, and failing, unfurling their wrapper: “Mel Gibson. And someone else, I dunno who ‘cos the name’s chopped off, but the last line is ‘for James Bond’.”

Person 1, pushing caramel off their teeth with a finger: “Maybe Sean Connery.”

Person 2, having successfully finished their chewy lolly without any sudden recourse to corrective oral surgery & feeling, therefore, quite smug: “He wasn’t the only Bond, you know. He wasn’t even the best Bond. Pearce Brosnan has done some of his finest work as Bond, but you keep overlooking him just because you think he never grew past Remington Steel.”

Person 1, unimpressed, dropping another Fantale in their mouth & looking pointedly at their new wrapper: “Yeah. (pause) Woody Allen. Whoa. Check out his real name.”

After which, the game is to try pronouncing ‘pretentious’ with a mouth full of chewy choc-caramel.

So. I had one or two Fantales on the flight home. OK, five. Anyway. The first two both had Heath Ledger on them, & I read them both, pausing on one line in the middle.

Huh, I thought, that’s pretty cool.

When I pulled out the third Fantale, it, too, had Heath Ledger on the wrapper.

Clearly I was meant to share that line with you.

AUSTRALIAN & NEW ZEALAND STARS
15. HEATH LEDGER
Born 4.4.79. Leaving school at 16, he drove from Perth to Sydney, arriving with 69 cents in his pocket. He debuted in Blackrock (97), played a gay cyclist in TV’s Seat and donned a loincloth to play a Celtic prince in TV’s Roar.

“Doors kept opening and I kept walking through them,” he said.

He signed with a Hollywood agent and after making the teen flick Ten Things I Hate About You he rejected many like it before he got the chance to play Mel Gibson’s rebel son in The Patriot (00) and then came home for Ned Kelly (03).