“(Heath and I) first met in New York and we were both struggling with things that I won’t get into, and we bonded over that. I kind of met him at first and said, ‘Listen, my mum’s living with me right now and I’m kind of going through a hard time and I’m not interested in having a serious relationship with somebody right now,’ and he was like, ‘You know, um, let’s just be there for each other through these hard times we’re both going through.’ And we developed a relationship and we started seeing each other.” They met in November of 2007, and spent that Christmas together, with their families. “The time we spent in Perth was incredible because we were both from Perth and it was also a time when it was beautiful in Perth and both our families were there and we met each other’s families. We were able to not be in any kind of a spotlight and not have to be meeting with people or be hounded by press or anything. We lived in a magical kind of world where we weren’t intruded upon.” Ledger died in January of 2008. Ward is returning to Perth this month to take the lead role in the Perth Theatre Company’s debut play, and her next film, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides comes out in May. The print version of this article ran with a new Peter Ash Lee photo of Ward at home in New York, one of the first authorized pictures of Ward made available since she mostly ceased modeling; it’s not online, but you can see a scanned copy here. For the record, Ward — who has always maintained that she intends to continue modeling, eventually — doesn’t rule out a return to the industry. [Herald Sun]