Heath Ledger Australian Actor Known for The Dark Knight

Early life

Heath Andrew Ledger was born on 4 April 1979 in Perth, Western Australia. His mother taught French and his father worked as a racing driver and mining engineer. He went to Guildford Grammar School, where he first appeared in school productions and helped lead a large dance team to victory at the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge. His older sister, who worked as an actress and later as a publicist, was an early influence on his interest in the stage. He sat his final exams early, at sixteen, and left school to pursue acting. With a close friend he drove across the country from Perth to Sydney to look for work.

Career

Ledger's earliest credits were Australian productions. He appeared in the television series Sweat, in which he played a cyclist, and later took parts in Roar, in the Australian soap Home and Away and in the feature film Blackrock, his first role in a full-length film. In 1998 he moved to the United States to build his career there.

His breakthrough came in 1999 with the teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, in which he played Patrick Verona. The same year he appeared in the Australian crime film Two Hands. In the early 2000s he took roles in The Patriot, where he played Corporal Gabriel Martin, and Monster's Ball, followed by leading parts in A Knight's Tale, The Four Feathers, The Order, Ned Kelly, Casanova, The Brothers Grimm and Lords of Dogtown. In 2001 he received the ShoWest Award for male star of tomorrow.

In Brokeback Mountain (2005) he played the ranch hand Ennis Del Mar opposite Jake Gyllenhaal. The performance brought him the best actor award from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He then appeared in Candy (2006), as a poet, and was one of the actors who portrayed different aspects of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007). For Candy he was nominated for several best actor prizes, including one from the Film Critics Circle of Australia.

Ledger played the Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, released in July 2008. His last role was Tony in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which was unfinished when he died on 22 January 2008. Gilliam completed the film by having Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell play versions of the character, and it reached cinemas in 2009. A documentary about his life, I Am Heath Ledger, followed in 2017.

Ledger also wanted to direct. Through his production company, The Masses, he made music videos for the Australian rapper N'fa and for Ben Harper, and he later completed videos for Modest Mouse and Grace Woodroofe that were released in 2009. He had been developing an adaptation of the novel The Queen's Gambit as his first feature as a director.

Recognition

For his work in The Dark Knight, Ledger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the ceremony held in February 2009. His family accepted the statuette on his behalf. He also took the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Screen Actors Guild Award for a supporting male performance and the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain. In total he is credited with six wins and two nominations in the records used here. The nominations are the two Academy Award nominations: Best Actor for Brokeback Mountain and Best Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight.

In 2011 the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia in his home city named a 575-seat auditorium the Heath Ledger Theatre. At its opening his Oscar was shown in the foyer.

Personal life

Ledger played chess from a young age, entered tournaments as a boy and later played in Washington Square Park in Manhattan. He supported the West Coast Eagles, the Perth-based Australian rules football club. He also took photographs, which he often painted over. He had one daughter. Ledger died on 22 January 2008 in New York at the age of 28.