Hail another New World hunk

It had to happen. Just when we thought we'd never see another Mel Gibson-type megastar from Down Under, along come several at once. But move over Russell Crowe and Guy Pierce.

Heath Ledger is about to become the latest New World Hunk.

The face which may already be vaguely familiar (The Patriot, 10 Things I Hate About You) will soon be plastered all over billboards near you. The hair is blonder, the jaw set a little squarer, the body firmer - Heath (his full name is Heathcliff, as in the brooding Wuthering Heights hero) is now setting pulses racing as a medieval heartthrob, the knight in shining armour.

Heath talks down his hero status in A Knight's Tale, which opens in London at the end of August. "It was hot, it was heavy, it was sweaty," he says unromantically about his suit of armour. "It was also itchy. I spent most of the time rubbing myself up against the nearest tree."

He is also talking down his soon-to-be superstardom. Despite the Hollywood lifestyle - Mel Gibson groomed him to be the new, er, Mel Gibson in last year's The Patriot, he replaced Jude Law in the forthcoming Four Feathers and he has just split from hotter-than-hot Heather Graham - Ledger is earnest in pouring cold water on the fame game.

"As with everything, it's the yin and the yang," he says. "Even when you're pursuing your dream of success as an actor, you really can't guess what realising that dream could take away from your life. Much as everyone recognises fame as the birth of something, to other aspects of your life, it's also a kind of death."

He's going to have to learn to live with it. Brian Helgeland's A Knight's Tale is about to bounce the 22-year-old from Perth into the upper echelons of Hollywood pay packets. An engagingly rowdy adventure set in a fantasy 14th-century England (the music includes Queen's We Will Rock You, so forget authenticity - this is fairy-tale), the movie hands Ledger heroic status on a plate, casting him as William Thatcher, a commoner who tricks his way onto the nobles-only jousting circuit. And Ledger runs with the role, tempering acts of comic-book bravado with an affecting vulnerability and a cheeky sense of fun.

"On and off screen, it was a ball," he admits. "All the horseriding, jousting and swordfighting was great. But as soon as I sat down with Brian, I'd known it was going to be fun. I could tell he was planning a wonderful playground for us all."

Writer/director Helgeland (who co-wrote the screenplay for LA Confidential) pitched his operation in Prague, where, in a very canny move, he assembled his main cast four weeks ahead of shooting.

"Then he got us pissed for a month. We had precisely one table reading, at which we were all blind drunk. But that was a smart move, because this movie is really about friendship," Ledger says. "By the end of that month we really, really liked each other."

What Ledger doesn't like so much is the starmaking process that the film, which has taken a very useful $55 million in the US, has triggered. "When I saw the poster for the movie (which features a portrait of a resolute-looking Ledger), I was pretty freaked," he says. "The film is an ensemble piece, and there's just my great, big mug. I'm just doing what I've always done - being an actor. Now I'm being made into a 'star', a product, and it's out of my control." Ledger has done his best to stay out of the public eye. His off-screen relationships - lately, with Heather Graham - have been kept reasonably private. "I understand why the Press are interested - it's something they can sell to readers. That's not a great reason to sit down and talk about what is private."

He will have to work harder to stay private in future, as his star has barely begun its ascent. While he dismisses rumours of future blockbuster roles such as Spiderman ("Someone approached someone, but there was no actual offer"), a revived Mad Max ("Nah") and the vampire LeStat ("Hmph"), he'll next hit cinemas next year in Shekhar Kapur's lavish remake of the 1939 film Four Feathers. When Jude Law dropped out of the project because of schedule clashes, Ledger won the race to replace him as British army officer Harry Faversham, joining a cast which includes Kate Hudson and Wes Bentley.