When it came to casting, Schamus had spent much of his career fighting against “all of the filters that studio executives used to cover their asses.
When it came to casting, Schamus had spent much of his career fighting against “all of the filters that studio executives used to cover their asses. Remember Q ratings? Now it’s ‘How many followers do they have on Instagram?’ or whatever the hell. It’s all BS.” Now that he was a studio executive, Schamus could keep things uncomplicated. He auditioned actors with Lee and casting director Avy Kaufman out of his faculty apartment at Columbia University, where he still teaches film history and theory.
Neither Lee nor Schamus get into specifics on who turned down the roles of Jack and Ennis—but many did. Mark Wahlberg reportedly told WENN in 2007 that he was “creeped out” by the script after meeting with Lee. Matt Damon revealed to Entertainment Weekly that he’d passed back when Van Sant was attached, telling the director, “Gus, I did a gay movie [The Talented Mr. Ripley], then a cowboy movie [All the Pretty Horses]. I can’t follow it up with a gay-cowboy movie!”
Lee felt the collective discomfort around that “gay cowboy” label: “That idea scared people back then. The cowboy is an American hero symbol. Something about it, people felt funny. I don’t know why that came up.”
In any case, the final assembled cast wasn’t too shabby. Anne Hathaway, who played Jack’s eventual wife, rushed over while on a filming break for The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement—and auditioned in her full Genovian garb. She “nailed it,” Schamus says, nabbing her biggest dramatic role in a movie to date. The project offered similar breakthroughs to Michelle Williams, who played Ennis’s wife, and Gyllenhaal; both stars received their first Oscar nominations for the film. But Ledger’s subtle, taciturn, heartbreaking performance proved most revelatory. It’s a defining role for the overdue, great actor, who died in 2008.
Schamus opened the door to his Columbia apartment turned makeshift casting office, watched Ledger walk in—and instantly, he knew. “I thought, Oh, here he is!” the producer says. That feeling only deepened as he got to know the actor: “He was literally one of the best chess players you would ever meet in your life. It’s still kind of wild to think of his combination of pure intelligence and pure presence.”
Lee, however, was less sure. Ledger was known for leading the rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You, but played supporting roles in prestige projects like Monster’s Ball and The Patriot. “He needed to be able to carry this movie,” Lee says. “I knew he was good. It took the movie to realize how good he is.”
Ledger pulled it off by doing a lot of tough, at times lonely work. Shortly after Ledger’s death, his agent Steve Alexander discussed with Vanity Fair how the actor felt “very isolated” filming Brokeback Mountain, stressing the difficulty of figuring out his enigmatic character. “Heath worked really hard at it, and it was exhausting. He thought Ang Lee was an incredible director, but Ang is a taskmaster, and he doesn’t coddle his actors.” Gyllenhaal recently told Vanity Fair that Ledger’s “consummate devotion to how serious and important the relationship between these two characters was—it showed me how devoted he was as an actor, and how devoted we both were to the story and the movie.”
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