Reading Ledger’s lips
Local actor hired to lip-read actor’s last remaining footage
JEFF HODSON/METRO VANCOUVER
July 28, 2008 02:45
A Vancouver actor and mime was tapped to
lip-read some of the last footage of Oscar-nominated actor Heath Ledger.
Max Fomitchev, a local deaf actor, and wife Selena Lohan, were asked
to decipher 11 minutes of footage shot during the making of Ledger’s last film, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
Ledger died Jan. 22 in New York City. Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell replaced him in the role.
The footage, which has no audio, was taken from camera or costume tests during filming.
Fomitchev and Lohan spent three hours watching the footage.
“We were able to fill out what he was saying, and some of it was cheeky, a little sassy and rude,” Lohan said.
“
We got to know him so well … he’s got such a sense of humour. He’s so playful.”At one point, Ledger stopped, broke from character, and said, “I’m really not feeling very well,” she said, adding that the insight, so close to the actor’s death almost made her tear up.
“By the end of the three hours we felt like we had lost somebody.”
They were able to lip-read about 70 per cent of what the actor was saying, but don’t know how the deciphered footage will be used.
http://www.metronews.ca/vancouver/local/article/90241