Terry Gilliam has revealed that Heath Ledger taught him about acting.
The pair reunited for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a project they were working on before Ledger's untimely death almost two years ago.
In the memory of his friend Gilliam brought in actors Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to complete the project.
In an interview with Paste the filmmaker said: "He just taught me what acting can be. I remember reading something with him saying I taught him how to play.
"But that’s what acting is. To me, he was always showing how fresh and playful one could be at the time. Watching him playing and having a good time was intriguing."
Gilliam went on to praise the actor who he first worked with in The Brothers Grimm in 2005: "I think so, because I just gave him room to play and I don’t think he’d really developed his comic sense before, and he had great comic sense.
"His timing was exquisite. He could be really silly, and yet it was never jokey. It was never superficial. It was always solid.
"And that was something that I thought was absolutely extraordinary. And I think especially in something like Parnassus, he had a lot of room to play because Tony is such a comedic character.
"So he’s just setting up the possibilities for lots of directions to go into. But on the other side of the mirror, he’s a big fiend, unfortunately."
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was Ledger's final big screen performance but he was awarded with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar earlier this year for his performance in The Dark Knight last summer.
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