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10 Things I Hate About You at 25: How romcom nearly missed Heath Ledger

'I hate it when you're not around, and the fact that you didn't call...'

When 10 Things I Hate About You was released, 25 years ago today, viewers all over the world fell head over heels for Heath Ledger and his sizzling talent, as well as his blinding chemistry with fellow unknown, Julia Stiles, but that very nearly wasn’t the case. Heath’s performance of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You will go down in history (Picture: Touchstone)Despite being ‘very green’, Ledger clearly had a knack for understanding his character and how to make everyone positively swoon, and elevated any scene he was in – whether it was a paintball fight or serenading an entire school, and everyone sitting at home. But there were also times the director had to give the Knight’s Tale lead a talking-to on set after noticing that he wasn’t quite on his A-game – explaining that he realized something was off while going over a scene where Patrick stormed away from Cameron and Michael (David Krumholtz) in the cafeteria out of embarrassment.

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