Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger
Ledger at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival Photo: Howie Berlin.
Born	Heath Andrew Ledger
Occupation	Film Actor
Years active	1996–2008
Partner(s)	Michelle Williams (2005–2007)
Awards	NYFCC Award For Best Actor 2005 Brokeback Mountain

Heath Andrew Ledger (April 4, 1979 – January 22, 2008) was an Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and SAG Award-nominated Australian film actor who lived in New York City. he was so freakin SEXXYY!!!!! After appearing in television roles during the 1990s, Ledger developed a movie career, appearing in nearly 20 films. He starred in both critical and box-office successes, including 10 Things I Hate About You, The Patriot, Monster's Ball, A Knight's Tale, and Brokeback Mountain. For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger was nominated for a 2005 Oscar for "Best Actor in a Leading Role" and won awards from the British Academy and the Australian Film Institute, as well as two MTV Movie Awards.

In addition to his work as an actor and as a producer and director of music videos, he also aspired to be a film director.

He completed filming his role as the Joker in the forthcoming movie The Dark Knight, shortly before dying from an accidental prescription drug overdose at age 28. His final film performance, uncompleted at the time of his death, is the role of Tony in Terry Gilliam's forthcoming film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Family and personal life

Heath Ledger was born on April 4, 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, the son of Sally Ledger Bell (née Ramshaw), a French teacher, and Kim Ledger, a race car driver and mining engineer, whose family established and owned the well-known Ledger Engineering Foundry. The Sir Frank Ledger Charitable Trust is named after his great-grandfather. Ledger attended Mary's Mount Primary School, in Gooseberry Hill, and later Guildford Grammar School, where he had his first acting experiences, starring in a school production as Peter Pan at age 10. His parents separated when he was 10 and divorced when he was 11. Ledger's older sister, Kate, an actress and later a publicist, with whom he was very close, inspired his acting on stage, and his love of Gene Kelly inspired his successful choreography leading to Guildford Grammar's 60-member team's "first all-boy victory" at the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge. Heath's and Kate's other siblings include two half-sisters, Ashleigh Bell (b. 1989), his mother's daughter with her second husband and his stepfather Roger Bell, and Olivia Ledger (b. 1997), his father's daughter with second wife and his stepmother Emma Brown.

Ledger was an avid chess player, winning Western Australia's junior chess championship at the age of 10. As an adult, he often played with other chess enthusiasts at Washington Square Park. Allan Scott's film adaptation of the chess-related 1983 novel The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis, which at the time of his death he was planning both to perform in and to direct, would have been Ledger's first feature film as a director.

Further information: § Directorial work

Among his most-notable romantic relationships, Ledger dated actress Heather Graham, from October 2000 to June 2001. He had a serious longterm relationship with actress Naomi Watts, whom he met during the filming of Ned Kelly. He met and began dating actress Michelle Williams on the set of Brokeback Mountain, and their daughter, Matilda Rose, was born on October 28, 2005 in New York City. Matilda Rose's godparents are Ledger's Brokeback co-star Jake Gyllenhaal and Williams' Dawson's Creek castmate Busy Philipps. Problems with paparazzi in Australia prompted Ledger to sell his residence in Bronte, New South Wales and move to the United States, where he shared an apartment with Williams, in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, from 2005 to 2007. In September 2007, Williams' father, Larry Williams, confirmed to Sydney's Daily Telegraph that Ledger and Williams had ended their relationship. After his break up with Williams, in late 2007 and early 2008, the tabloid press and other public media linked Ledger romantically with supermodels Helena Christensen and Gemma Ward and with former child star, actress Mary-Kate Olsen.

Career

1990s

At 16, Ledger sat for early graduation exams and left school to pursue an acting career. With his best friend, Trevor DiCarlo, Ledger made the cross-country drive to Sydney. He returned to Perth for the TV series Sweat (1996), in which he played a gay cyclist.

In 1996, prior to his film debut in the 1997 Australian movie Blackrock, Ledger was involved in the short-lived Fox Broadcasting Company fantasy-drama Roar. This was immediately followed by a part on Home and Away, one of Australia's most successful television shows. In 1999, Ledger starred in the teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You and also had the lead role in the acclaimed Australian movie Two Hands, directed by Gregor Jordan.

2000s

From 2000 to 2005, he starred in The Patriot, Monster's Ball, A Knight's Tale, The Four Feathers, Ned Kelly, The Order, and The Brothers Grimm. In 2001, he won a ShoWest Award for the Male Star of Tomorrow based on his performance in The Patriot, and worldwide release of A Knight's Tale.

Ledger received "Best Actor of 2005" awards from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle for his performance in Brokeback Mountain, in which he plays Wyoming ranch hand Ennis Del Mar, who has a love affair with aspiring rodeo rider Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. He also received a nomination for Golden Globe Best Actor in a Drama and a nomination for Academy Award for Best Actor for this performance. At age 26, Ledger became one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. In The New York Times review of the film, critic Stephen Holden writes: "Both Mr. Ledger and Mr. Gyllenhaal make this anguished love story physically palpable. Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn." In a review in Rolling Stone, Peter Travers states: "Ledger's magnificent performance is an acting miracle. He seems to tear it from his insides. Ledger doesn't just know how Ennis moves, speaks and listens; he knows how he breathes. To see him inhale the scent of a shirt hanging in Jack's closet is to take measure of the pain of love lost."

Also in 2005, Ledger portrayed a fictionalised version of Giacomo Casanova in Casanova, a romantic comedy which co-starred Sienna Miller.

Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight

In 2006, Ledger was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 2007, he was one of six actors to portray different sides of singer Bob Dylan in the film I'm Not There. Before Brad Pitt accepted the lead after Ledger reportedly withdrew from the project, in December 2007, Ledger was to star, opposite Sean Penn in a supporting role, in Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick.

Ledger plays the Joker in The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan, the sequel to the 2005 film Batman Begins, which is to be released on July 18, 2008. The Dark Knight was in post-production at the time of Ledger's death. Nolan has praised Ledger's performance as "iconic".

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, in which Ledger had been cast in a major supporting role, was still in production at the time of his death.

Directorial work

Ledger had aspirations to become a film director and made some music videos. In 2006 he debuted as a director with the music videos for the title track on Australian hip-hop artist N'fa's CD debut solo album Cause an Effect and for the single "Seduction Is Evil (She's Hot)".

Later in 2006, Ledger started a new record label, Masses Music, with singer Ben Harper and also directed a music video for Harper's song "Morning Yearning".

At a news conference at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, Ledger spoke of his desire to make a documentary film about the British singer-songwriter Nick Drake, who died in 1974, at the age of 26, from an overdose of an antidepressant. Ledger created and acted in a music video set to Drake's recording of the singer's 1974 song about depression "Black Eyed Dog"–a title "inspired by Winston Churchill’s descriptive term for depression" (black dog); it was shown publicly only twice, first at the Bumbershoot Festival, in Seattle, Washington, held from September 1 to September 3, 2007; and secondly as part of "A Place To Be: A Celebration of Nick Drake", with its screening of Their Place: Reflections On Nick Drake, "a series of short filmed homages to Nick Drake" (including Ledger's), sponsored by American Cinematheque, at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, in Hollywood, on October 5, 2007. After Ledger's death, his music video for "Black Eyed Dog" was shown on the internet and excerpted in news clips distributed via YouTube.

He was also working with Scottish screenwriter and producer Allan Scott on an adaptation of the 1983 novel The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis; he was planning both to act in and to direct it, and it would have been his first feature film as a director.

Press controversies

Ledger's relationship with the press in Australia was sometimes turbulent, and it led to his relocating to New York City. In 2004 he strongly denied press reports alleging that "he spat at journalists on the Sydney set of the movie Candy," or that one of his relatives had done so later, outside Ledger's Sydney home. On January 13, 2006, "Several members of the paparazzi retaliated ... squirting Ledger and Williams with water pistols on the red carpet at the Sydney premiere of Brokeback Mountain."

After his performance on stage at the 2005 Screen Actors Guild Awards, when he had giggled in presenting Brokeback Mountain as a nominee for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, the Los Angeles Times referred to his presentation as an "apparent gay spoof." Ledger called the Times later and explained that his levity resulted from stage fright, saying that he had been told that he would be presenting the award only minutes earlier; he stated: "I am so sorry and I apologise for my nervousness. I would be absolutely horrified if my stage fright was misinterpreted as a lack of respect for the film, the topic and for the amazing filmmakers."

Ledger was quoted in January 2006 in Melbourne's Herald Sun as saying that he heard that West Virginia had banned Brokeback Mountain, which it had not; actually, a cinema in Utah had banned the film. He had also referred mistakenly to West Virginia's having had lynchings as recently as the 1980s, but state scholars disputed his statement, observing that, whereas lynchings did occur in Alabama as recently as 1981, according to "the director of state archives and history" quoted in The Charleston Gazette, "The last documented lynching in West Virginia took place in Lewisburg in 1931." Yet The Gazz qualifies its newspaper's report somewhat further in adding, "though you have to wonder what the Klan was up to in the decades after that."

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.… [sic] 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"… [sic] and he was taking all these pills [to help him] [sic].'"

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.'"

Death

At about 2:45 PM on January 22, 2008, Ledger was found unconscious in his fourth-floor loft apartment, at 421 Broome Street, in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. Emergency crews arrived soon after but were unable to revive him.. He was pronounced dead at 3:36 p.m., and his body removed from the apartment, while crowds of onlookers began gathering outside throughout that night.

After two weeks of intense media speculation about possible causes of his death, on 6 February, 2008, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York released its conclusions, based on an initial autopsy of January 23, 2008, and a subsequent complete toxicological analysis. The report concludes, in part, "Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine." It also states definitively: "We have concluded that the manner of death is accident, resulting from the abuse of prescription medications." The medications found in the toxicological analysis are commonly prescribed in the United States for insomnia, anxiety, depression, pain, and/or cold symptoms. The Medical Examiner's Office also announced that it would not be publicly disclosing the official estimated time of death. The official announcement of the cause of Ledger's death heightened concerns about general "abuse of prescription medications." Late in February 2008, a still-ongoing DEA investigation of medical professionals "cleared" two American medics, who practice in Los Angeles and Houston, of "any wrongdoing," determining that "the doctors in question had prescribed Ledger other medications–not the pills that killed him."

Memorial tributes

Memorial for Heath Ledger outside 421 Broome Street, SoHo, Manhattan

On January 23, 2008, Ledger's parents and sister appeared outside his mother's house in Applecross, a riverside suburb of Perth, and read a short statement to the media expressing their grief and desire for privacy. Within the next few days, memorial tributes were communicated by family members, Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd, Deputy Premier of Western Australia Eric Ripper, Warner Brothers (distributor of The Dark Knight, his final completed film), and thousands of Ledger's fans around the world.

Numerous actors have made statements expressing their sorrow at Ledger's death, including Daniel Day-Lewis who dedicated his Screen Actors Guild Award to Ledger, saying that he was inspired by Ledger's acting; Day-Lewis praised Ledger's performances in Monster's Ball and Brokeback Mountain, describing the latter as "unique, perfect."

On February 1 2008, Michelle Williams' first public statement on the death expressed her heartbreak and described her seeing Ledger's spirit surviving in their daughter.

After attending private memorial ceremonies in Los Angeles, Ledger's family members returned with his body to Perth. On February 9 2008, a memorial service attended by several hundred invited guests was held at Penhros College. After that service, Ledger's body was cremated at Fremantle Cemetery, followed by a private service attended only by "10 closest family members", with his ashes to be "scattered in a family plot at Karrakatta Cemetery, next to two of his grandparents." Later that night, his family and friends gathered for a wake on Cottesloe Beach.

"The Last Days of Heath Ledger"

A posthumous fictionalized account of "The Last Days of Heath Ledger," by Lisa Taddeo ("an associate editor at Golf Magazine and an aspiring fiction writer, [who] spent four days in restaurants and cafes and parks near where Mr. Ledger died,") has raised some controversy prior to its print publication in the April 2008 issue of Esquire. It covers Ledger's final four days, from January 19 through January 22, 2008, the day he died, whose entry is subtitled "The Final Curtain." According to Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism at Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia, "The risk of a piece like 'The Last Days of Heath Ledger' is that the work winds up in a literary no-man’s land. The biggest problem I see is you are sacrificing the biggest strengths from each of the genres. You are losing the veracity of journalism, and you are losing the imaginative license of fiction. You run the risk of ending up with something that is neither true nor interesting."

Controversy over will

After Heath Ledger's death, in response to some press reports about his will, filed in New York City on February 28, 2008, and his daughter's access to his financial legacy, his father, Kim, said that he considered the financial well-being of his granddaughter Matilda Rose the Ledger family's "absolute priority" and her mother, Michelle Williams, "an integral part of our family," adding in his public "statement:" "They will be taken care of and that's how Heath would want it to be." Some relatives of Heath Ledger may be challenging the legal status of his will signed in 2003 prior to the birth of his daughter, which was filed in New York and divides half of his $60 million estate between his parents and half among his siblings; they claim that there is a second, unsigned will, which leaves most of that estate to Matilda Rose. Williams' father, Larry, has also joined the controversy about Ledger's will as it was filed in New York City soon after his death. On March 31, 2008, an "Exclusive" report published in Australia stated that "Heath Ledger's family believe the late actor may have fathered a secret love child" when he was 17 and that "If it is confirmed that Ledger is the girl's biological father, it could split his multi-million dollar estate between" Matilda Rose and this "secret love child."

Forthcoming films

Ledger's death has affected the marketing campaign for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and also both the production and marketing of Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and both directors intend their films to celebrate and pay tribute to Ledger's work in them. Although Gilliam temporarily suspended production on the latter film, he expressed determination to "salvage" it, perhaps using computer-generated imagery (CGI), and plans to dedicate it to the memory of Heath Ledger. In February 2008 actors Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell signed on to take over Ledger's role, becoming multiple incarnations of his character, Tony, transformed in the "magical" world of the film, in part as a "tribute" to Ledger.

Filmography

Film

#	Year	Title	Role	Notes	Country
1	1992	Clowning Around
2	1997	Blackrock	Toby
3		Paws	Oberon
4	1999	Two Hands	Jimmy	AFI Award nominee (Best Actor in a Leading Role)
5		10 Things I Hate About You	Patrick Verona
6	2000	The Patriot	Gabriel Martin
7	2001	Monster's Ball	Sonny Grotowski
8		A Knight's Tale	Sir William Thatcher / Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein of Gelderland
9	2002	The Four Feathers	Harry Faversham
10	2003	The Order	Alex Bernier
11		Ned Kelly	Ned Kelly	AFI Award nominee (Best Actor in a Leading Role)
12	2005	Casanova	Giacomo Casanova
13		The Brothers Grimm	Jacob Grimm
14		Lords of Dogtown	Skip Engblom
15		Brokeback Mountain	Ennis del Mar	Academy Award nominee (Best Lead Actor) Golden Globe nominee (Best Lead Actor - Drama) BAFTA Award nominee (Best Lead Actor) SAG nominee (Best Lead Actor, Best Ensemble Cast) AFI Award (Best Lead Actor)
16	2006	Candy	Dan	AFI Award nominee (Best Actor in a Leading Role) IF Award nominee (Best Actor) FCCA Award nominee (Best Actor)
17	2007	I'm Not There	Robbie Clark
18	2008	The Dark Knight	The Joker	post-production
19	2009	The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus	Tony	post-production

Music videos and shorts

• (2006) "Cause an Effect" and "Seduction is Evil (She's Hot)" songs by N'fa, music videos directed by Ledger.
• (2006) "Morning Yearning," song by Ben Harper, video directed by Ledger.
• (2007) "Black Eyed Dog," directed by and featuring Ledger. Short film set to 1974 song about depression written by Nick Drake
• (2007) "King Rat" by Modest Mouse, directed by Terry Gilliam and featuring Ledger.

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1993	Ship to Shore	Cyclist
1996	Sweat	Snowy Bowles	Series regular
1997	Home and Away	Scott Irwin	Guest
	Roar	Conor	Series regular

Awards and nominations

• Academy Awards
  • 2006 - Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Brokeback Mountain (Nominated)
• Australian Film Institute Awards
  • 1999 - Best Lead Actor, Two Hands (Nominated)
  • 2003 - Best Lead Actor, Ned Kelly (Nominated)
  • 2006 - Best Lead Actor, Candy (Nominated)
• BAFTA
  • 2006 - Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Brokeback Mountain (Nominated)
• Golden Globe Awards
  • 2006 - Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama, Brokeback Mountain (Nominated)
• Independent Spirit Awards
  • 2008 - Robert Altman Award, I'm Not There. (Won) *shared w/ cast and crew.
  • 2006 - Best Male Lead, Brokeback Mountain (Nominated)
• MTV Movie Awards
  • 2006 - Best Kiss, Brokeback Mountain (Won) *shared w/ Jake Gyllenhaal
  • 2002 - Best Kiss, A Knight's Tale (Nominated) *shared w/ Shannyn Sossamon
  • 2002 - Best Musical Sequence A Knight's Tale (Nominated)*shared w/ Shannyn Sossamon
  • 2000 - Best Musical Sequence 10 Things I Hate About You (Nominated)
• Screen Actors Guild Awards
  • 2006 - Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, Brokeback Mountain (Nominated)
  • 2006 - Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, Brokeback Mountain (Nominated)

See also

• List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees - Youngest Nominees for Best Actor

Further reading

• Adler, Shawn."Heath Ledger Said He Hoped To Evolve As An Actor And Person In 2005 Interview: Late actor was intelligent, self-aware during 'Brokeback Mountain' chat." mtv.com, January 22, 2008. Accessed March 18, 2008. (Excerpts from transcript of interview with Heath Ledger conducted by John Norris in 2005.)
• McShane John. Heath Ledger: His Beautiful Life and Mysterious Death. London: John Blake, 2008. ISBN 1844546330 (10). ISBN 978-1844546336 (13). (Excerpt listed below.)
• –––. "Loves of Heath Ledger's Life". The Courier-Mail, April 20, 2008. Accessed April 21, 2008. (Book excerpt.)
• Norris, Chris. "(Untitled Heath Ledger Project): In Which the Protagonist Dies Mysteriously, and the Audience Analyzes His Final Days for Clues to His Real Character". New York, February 18, 2008. Accessed April 21, 2008.
• Robb, Brian J. Heath Ledger: Hollywood's Dark Star. London: Plexus Publishing Ltd, forthcoming July 1, 2008. ISBN 0859654273 (10). ISBN 978-0859654272 (13). (Forthcoming on August 1, 2008 in the U.S..)
• Sessums, Kevin, with photographs by Bruce Weber. "We're Having a Heath Wave". Vanity Fair, August 2000. (4 pages.) Accessed April 21, 2008. (Interview with Heath Ledger; illustrations in "Perth Album", by Bruce Weber.)
• Travers, Peter."Sundance: Shock". The Travers Take: News and Reviews from Rolling Stone's Movie Critic, Rolling Stone (Blog), rollingstone.com, January 22, 2008. Includes hyperlinked feature: Video Review: A Look at Heath Ledger's Best Performances (video by Jennifer Hsu, with audio commentary provided by Travers), February 1, 2008. Accessed April 21, 2008.

External links

• "Heath Ledger: April 4, 1979 – January 22, 2008". The Daily Telegraph (Australia). Accessed February 2, 2008. (Tabloid newspaper.)
• Heath Ledger at IMDb. Accessed February 18, 2008.
• Heath Ledger at People.com. Accessed February 2, 2008.
• In Pictures: Heath Ledger's Life. BBC. Accessed February 11, 2008. (Features menu: "Heath Ledger: 1979–2008".)
• "Timeline of Heath Ledger's Career". GMANews.tv. Accessed February 2, 2008.
• Times Topics: Heath Ledger. The New York Times. Accessed February 5, 2008.

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