An excerpt from
Heath Ledger's bio:
[
Heath] had read Proulx's story and t
he screenplay adaptation, by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and found both deeply moving. "I truly had a lump in my throat, but . . . t
hese
manufactured fears started to bleed into my response to t
he script -- 'Oh, this is risky,' that sort of thing,"
he explained. "But t
hen that just started to fade away and I thought . . . 'What exactly am I risking?' I didn't feel like I had a career to risk, and I'm a little ruthless about it anyway. If it went away based upon a creative choice I made, t
hen it's not really an industry I want to be in."