Heathcliff Andrew Ledger April 4, 1979 - January 22, 2008

Heath Ledger was born in Perth, Australia, on April 4, 1979, the son of a French teacher and a race car driver (and mining engineer).  Sixteen years later, he sat for his high school exams early so he could pursue an acting career in Sydney.

Heath's first acting experience came at 10, when he was cast as Michael in a local theater production of Peter Pan.  This led to roles in children's television programs, and a bit part in a 1992 Australian feature film Clowning Around, starring Van Johnson. Attending a private all-boys school called Guildford grammar, Ledger excelled as an athlete--he was captain of the Kalamunda (a suburb of Perth) hockey team.  This helped him get a role in the TV series Sweat (1996), about a school for the athletically gifted, in which he played a gay cyclist--one of the few homosexual characters on Australian television that was not effeminate. After a small part in Paws (1997), about a talking dog (voiced by Billy Connolly), and an appearance as a surfer in an episode of Home and Away, Ledger landed the leading role in the American TV series Roar (1997-2000)--shot in Australia--as a Celtic chieftain fighting to rid 4th-century Ireland of Roman rule.

The 18-year-old Ledger had been flown to Los Angeles for a screen test in front of studio executives.  "The room was packed with suits," Ledger recalled.  "After every shot, they swarmed together like a pack of ants on a sweet biscuit, whispering.  It was definitely not my best performance, but something must have gone right." Ledger's "Braveheart" portrayal got Hollywood interested in him.  Before leaving for California to take up various offers, he played a naive doorman of a strip club who gets involved with gangsters in Two Hands (1999), shot vividly in Sydney's notorious King's Cross district.

Ledger then moved to Los Angeles, where he gained the part of Patrick Verona, a long-haired, undisciplined boy at Padua high school, who takes a bribe to invite shrewish Kate Stratford (Julia Stiles) to the prom in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), an updated, overly-contrived teen-pic version of The Taming of the Shrew. The teen comedy raked in more than $50 million, but Ledger admitted he was unhappy being labeled a heartthrob.  "I was a young kid from Australia, and that was the only movie someone was willing to put me in, so what do you do?" he told the Houston Chronicle.

Ledger, who exudes a natural charm, has a show-stopping scene when he sings "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" to Kate over loud speakers on the athletic field.

In the preposterous The Patriot (2000), Ledger played Mel Gibson's eldest son who signs up to fight the Red Coats during the Revolutionary Wars of 1776.  According to the New York Times, who called Ledger a "somewhat remote hunk," Gibson "in their scenes together, almost seems to be directing Mr. Ledger on screen, and the younger actor responds with an exasperated bashfulness that makes him less cool and more likable."  If nothing else, the film cemented Ledger's teen appeal as America's hunk of choice.

A Knight's Tale (2001) did nothing to dispel this view.  Even though Ledger, with his tousled blond surfer looks plays the jouster-cum-rock star in 14th-century England with his tongue firmly in his cheek, he could not avoid being hunk-like.

With this in mind, he took the comparatively small role of the weak son of a death-row guard in Monster's Ball (2001), who vomits while escorting a condemned man to the chair.

As Sonny Grotowski in Monster's Ball (2001).

HEATH LEDGER (2001)

HEATH LEDGER (2001)

It was back to action in the fifth (feeble) remake of the colonial adventure The Four Feathers (2002), in which he was a coward who redeems himself, and a return to his homeland, in the shakily Irish-accented title role in Ned Kelly (2003), the 19th-century outlaw. Neither film did anything for Ledger's acting reputation, though he continued to feature on magazine covers and gossip columns.  Off-screen, he dated actors Naomi Watts, Lisa Zane and Heather Graham.

His renegade Catholic priest in The Order (2003) and his drunk and stoned skate-boarding guru in Lords of Dogtown (2005) added to the gloom.

There was no respite with Terry Gilliam's wearisome The Brothers Grimm (2005), in which he and Matt Damon played the 19th-century German fairytale writers with dubious English accents.

With Matt Damon in The Brothers Grimm

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005)

Ledger’s next film after Brokeback Mountain was Casanova (2005), which received mixed reviews.

In 2006, he made Candy, in which he played a heroin addict.

Ledger's role as The Joker in The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie, proved that he was not just a pretty face.  There is no doubt that he would have had an illustrious career in front of him.

"It's the most fun I've had with a character and probably will ever have," he said.  "The movie itself is far exceeding my expectations.  I think it's going to be a really fun movie to watch."

There's no question the role in the movie earmarked as this summer's blockbuster took a frightening toll. Ledger recently told reporters he "slept an average of two hours a night" while playing "a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy ... "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." Prescription drugs didn't help, he said.

The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan said it was almost inevitable that the sequel to Batman Begins would pit Batman against the Joker. Long before Ledger's death in January, the marketing of the movie had focused on the villain's rise to power and his creepy appearance. There had been speculation among critics and fans that the studio and filmmakers might take a different approach to selling the film in light of Ledger's death, but the marketing has gone on as originally planned. "I think he'd be very pleased to see we're just moving ahead as is," Nolan said.  "If you try to honor somebody, you honor them by respecting their work and putting it out there for people to see. Heath was immensely proud of the work he did on the film.  I feel a great burden to present that in an undistorted form."

TRIBUTE FROM CHRISTIAN BALE

"You know, I don't like kind of trivializing the tragedy [of Heath's death] in conjunction with an interview to do with the movie, which is clearly far less important.  But Heath was a joy," the actor tells Entertainment Weekly. "He really was like that, because he was a very unique man.  I enjoyed watching him work, working with him." Bale, who plays Batman opposite Ledger's Joker, says that he appreciated his costar's professionalism and dedication to the comic book tale. "What was so great to see with Heath is just how seriously he took it," says Bale.  "And we don't mean in any way to sound sort of pretentious with that, but just in the fact that if we don't take it seriously, then how can any audience ever take it seriously?  And he did one hell of a job." After watching a recent Warner Bros. presentation with clips from the film, which hits theater July 18, Bale added, "It gave me goose bumps throughout, looking at Heath up there.  And I just hope that this can celebrate him, celebrate his work."

Christian Bale

TRIBUTE FROM FOCUS PICTURES CEO

"Heath Ledger was a courageous actor, and a great soul," James Schamus, CEO of Focus Features and producer of Brokeback Mountain said of the star.  "He gave us the gift of sharing his fearless and beautiful love--of his craft, and of all who worked with him--for which all of us will be eternally grateful."

MICHAEL CAINE'S HIGH PRAISE FOR HEATH LEDGER'S "JOKER"

"I tell you the big surprise in the new Batman -- Heath Ledger as the Joker," Caine told reporters.  "He's fantastic.  He's gone in a different direction than Jack (Nicholson) … Jack was like a really scary old, nasty old uncle with a funny face.  Heath is like the most murderous psychopath you've ever seen on the screen," Caine said.

DIRECTOR ANG LEE ON HEATH LEDGER'S "JOKER"

"You can tell Jack Nicholson was having fun doing that, but you can see Heath probably put his soul into it," said Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee. "That's why it's scary. You see the trailer, just a few shots of him, you have to see the movie. ... I'm anxious to see it. I'm afraid to see it. I don't know how I'll respond to it, but you have to see it."

After finishing the role of The Joker, Ledger was one of six actors trying to define singer Bob Dylan in the movie I'm Not There. (The others include Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Richard Gere.)

Ledger contends that critics may be over-thinking the theme. "I don't think you need to be a Dylan genius in order to appreciate it as a story," Ledger says. "It is a film, not a quiz. There is no Q&A afterwards. "Quite frankly, I think the less of Dylan you know, the better off you are," he adds. "You just strap yourself in and enjoy the ride."

Adopting the same casual attitude to his performance, the actor admits that he occasionally studied Dylan films, read biographies and listened to Dylan's music. "But I always reach a point where I wonder if I've done too much or too little research," he says. As for the other actors trying to fit into different Dylan personas during various phases in his career? Ledger says he didn't worry about comparisons. "Essentially, Todd [Todd Haynes, the director] dissected Bob, and I was like an amputated limb," he says.  "So I was just concentrating on one arm of Bob Dylan, essentially." Overall, Ledger says, "what I like best is that Todd attempted to respectfully preserve the Dylan mystique."

At the time of his death on January 22, 2008, Ledger was working on the fantasy film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which was scheduled for a 2009 release.

The erstwhile heartthrob makes a point to avoid "blond bimbo roles."  And he's gone out of his way not to look the part, always sporting a bit of hair on his youthful face.  His whiskers have sprouted into a full-blown grizzly beard.

LEDGER ON HIS "HIGH FIVE"

It was more than a year since his last film, the less-than-successful The Sin Eater, was released in Australia, but Ledger, 26, was about to start making up for lost time.

He had several movies opening within a short time in 2005, beginning with Lords of Dogtown and followed in no particular order by The Brothers Grimm, co-starring Matt Damon; Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, in which Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play gay cowboys; Lasse Hallstrom's Casanova; and Candy, based on a book about Australian drug addicts.   And he is about to view all of them at the DeMille Theatre at the Culver Studios. "Hopefully they're all good," Ledger said, "I had time off before this string of work and I was also at the end of destroying my career. "So, I'd finally destroyed it and I had to rebuild it and that's why I went off and did five films back-to-back, because I was like, 'It's time to mend this open wound.' "There were finally projects that I chose, you know?  There wasn't just stuff I had to do or the only stuff I could do.  I got to work with really wonderful directors and wonderful people and it's been the most exciting year of my career. "I wanted to look at all five projects as one, like it was a boxed set of what I could do or what I want to be able to do."

LEDGER'S ASSESSMENT OF HIS CAREER AT AGE 24

He says, "It was a time when I had not really chosen my career path--it had been chosen for me.  I didn't audition for A Knight's Tale; I was given it. "And then the studio put my face on a poster and wrote, 'He Will Rock You,' and if I didn't, my career would have been over.  That was the first lead I'd had in anything, and there were all these new pressures, which freaked me out. "I felt like my career was out of my hands.  I wasn't making any decisions; they were being made for me.  And so to a certain degree, I had to go out and destroy my career somewhat in order to rebuild it.  At the time, I had studios telling me I was crazy.  I had agents on my back, publicists, family members, everyone saying, 'What are you doing?  You should be this.  You should be that.  You should follow the dollar.  Follow the gloss.' "My life is together, both professionally and socially.  But it's been a big learning process, and there is no YODA--there's no one who points you in the right direction.  You've got to figure that out by yourself."

HEATH'S THOUGHTS ON MONEY AND HIS CAREER (In interview about his role in I'm Not There completed in November 2007)

"You don't grow if you're safe about the choices you make," insists Heath Ledger. He's talking about his latest role as one of the many faces of Bob Dylan depicted in Todd Haynes's I'm Not There, an impressionistic docu-drama reflecting Dylan's kaleidoscopic life. ". . . no amount of money changes what I do between 'action' and 'cut',” Ledger says.  "Before I got into the industry, I never imagined I'd have anywhere near the money I have now. "I don't need any more.  It's not that I don't want the money, it's just that I would have been really happy sitting on a beach or surfing every morning. "I never had money, and I was very happy without it.  When I die, my money's not gonna come with me.  My movies will live on--for people to judge what I was as a person.  I just want to stay curious."

At the end of the day, I really don't mind if people are confused about who I am as a person or if they think I'm bad. As long as they don't know who I am I'm happy with it, because the person I am is for my friends and my family.

On the set of Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in London (January 18, 2008)

January 19, 2008

In the end, Heath Ledger's official cause of death was a toxicological character sketch--masterfully vague, all facts with few answers.  Much like his life, we could read it any way we wanted.

Strangely enough, considering the number of paparazzi and "friends" and bartenders and cell-phone-camera users in the city, there is no accurate account of Ledger's final 24 hours.  He was last seen at the Beatrice Inn the Sunday before he died, wearing, in either a misguided bid for anonymity or a sign of serious psychic trouble, a ski mask over his face. Ledger didn't hide his insomnia, stress, or poor health.  He was on a break from shooting The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus on cold, wet outdoor London sets.  He was flying back and forth to New York, flipping time zones, missing his daughter, going into his usual creative hyperdrive, and wandering the city into the early hours.  On the night before he died, he may have been suffering from any combination of depression, anxiety, insomnia, pneumonia, drug addiction, and/or drug withdrawal.   The only thing we know for sure is that he was doing it alone.

Effects of work on health: sleep disturbances In a New York Times interview with Sarah Lyall published on November 4, 2007, Ledger stated that his recently-completed roles in The Dark Knight and I'm Not There had taken a toll on his ability to sleep:  "Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. ... I couldn't stop thinking.  My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going."  At that time, he told Lyall that he had taken two Ambien pills, after taking just one had not sufficed, and those left him in "a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing." Prior to his return to New York from his last film assignment, in London, in January 2008, while he was apparently suffering from some kind of respiratory illness, he reportedly complained to his co-star Christopher Plummer that he was continuing to have difficulty sleeping and taking pills to help with that problem:  Confirming earlier reports that Ledger hadn't been feeling well on set, Plummer says, "We all caught colds because we were shooting outside on horrible, damp nights.  But Heath's went on and I don't think he dealt with it immediately with the antibiotics.… I think what he did have was the walking pneumonia. ... On top of that he was saying all the time, "dammit, I can't sleep"… and he was taking all these pills [to help him]." In talking with Interview magazine after his death, Ledger's former fiancée Michelle Williams also confirmed reports the actor had experienced trouble sleeping.  "For as long as I'd known him, he had bouts with insomnia," she said.  "He had too much energy.  His mind was turning, turning turning always turning."

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