Background

Ethnicity: Heath Ledger's ancestry was English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and, from his matrilineal great-great-grandmother, Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish.

Heath Ledger was born on April 4, 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, Australia, to mother Sally Ledger Bell, a French teacher, and father Kim Ledger, a racecar driver and mining specialist. He and his sister, Kate, were reportedly named after two main characters in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

Growing up, Heath was the only son in the family. He was particularly close with his elder sister Kate, who was an actress and sparked his love of acting. His parents divorced when he was 11, and he also has two half-sisters, Ashleigh and Olivia, from their other marriages.

Education

Heath Ledger started his education at Mary's Mount Primary School and continued at Guildford Grammar School. When he was 11 years old, Ledger played field hockey for the Kalamunda Hockey Club. He was so serious about hockey that from 1990 to 1992, his own dad became the president of the club. People even thought he might have a chance as a professional field hockey player - but he ultimately chose acting.

As the story goes, in junior high school it was compulsory to take one of two electives, either cooking or drama. As Heath could not see himself in a cooking class he tried his hand at drama. Heath was talented, however, the rest of the class did not acknowledge his talent. When he was seventeen he and a friend decided to pack up, leave school, take a car, and rough it to Sydney. Heath believed Sydney to be the place where dreams were made or, at least, where actors could possibly get their big break.

Career

Heath Ledger began acting in school productions in junior high and moved to Sydney at age 17 to pursue a career in performance. His first roles were on television, and in 1997 he appeared in the Australian soap opera Home and Away. After various small roles on television, Ledger's feature film debut came in 1997 in the emotional drama Blackrock, a largely unimpressive cliché; an adolescent angst film about one boy's struggle when he learns his best mate raped a girl. He only had a very small role in the film.

After that small role, Heath auditioned for a role in a TV show called Sweat about a group of young Olympic hopefuls. He was offered one of two roles, one as a swimmer, another as a gay cyclist. This led to a starring role in the historical fantasy series Roar, costarring Keri Russell and backed by financiers in the United States. The series was nominated for several awards and exposed Ledger to American audiences and Fox executives.

On the urging of then-girlfriend Liza Zane (who also appeared in the series,) Ledger sought out an American agent and followed Zane back to Los Angeles at the age of 19. In 1999, Ledger was fully exposed to an international audience with his breakout role opposite Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You. The character, Patrick Verona, which he had portrayed in this flick, was of great significance to the plot. The film was a cult success among younger audiences.

The same year he also starred in the Australian crime flick Two Hands. The movie went on to receive a string of actors and even a nomination for Ledger in the Best Actor category. After that, it seemed Heath was being typecast as a young hunk, which he did not like, so he accepted a role in a very serious war drama Patriot (2000).

The same year, he also became a part of the ensemble cast of Monster’s Ball, which also included the famous actress Halle Berry. In Monster’s Ball, he portrayed a young corrections officer who questions old family prejudices. His exposure to these films, coupled with his growing reputation as a Hollywood playboy, led People magazine to name Ledger one of its 50 Most Beautiful People in 2001. During the period 2001-2003, Heath Ledger starred in four other films, namely A Knight’s Tale, The Order, The Four Feathers, and Ned Kelly.

Ledger worked steadily on independent films until 2005 when he was once again thrust into the spotlight with his contribution to one of the most controversial films to date. In 2005 Ledger appeared as pioneering skateboarder Skip Engblom in Lords of Dogtown and as the legendary title character in the comedy Casanova. Ledger drew further praise as a heroin addict in Candy (2006). His portrayal of the character Dan, in this movie, fetched him numerous awards.

His sympathetic turn as the taciturn and tormented cowboy Ennis Del Mar in director Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005) won him Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for best actor. The film caused a media sensation because of its frank and sympathetic portrayal of the clandestine gay romance between Ledger’s character and another cowboy, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. 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.

Ledger then contributed his impressionistic rendering of musician Bob Dylan to the ensemble cast of I’m Not There (2007). Ledger had completed his role as the Joker in the Batman movie The Dark Knight (2008) and was working on the Terry Gilliam film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus when he died from an accidental overdose of a mixture of prescription drugs.

Achievements

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  Heath Ledger was honored with the New York Film Circle Award in the Best Actor category for his role in the flick Brokeback Mountain. He was even nominated for the prestigious Academy Award For the Best Actor as well as the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in the same film. The role which made Heath Ledger immortal was his portrayal of the Joker in the 2008 flick The Dark Knight. The movie went on to become a top-grosser worldwide.
  
  Heath Ledger received numerous posthumous awards for his role as The Joker in The Dark Knight (2008) including the Academy Award (2008) for Best Supporting Actor, Australian Film Institute Awards (2008) for Best Actor International, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award (2008) for Best Supporting Actor, Golden Globe Award (2009) for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and BAFTA Award (2009) for Best Supporting Actor.
  
  After his death, the Australians in Film society created a scholarship in Heath Ledger’s name. It is awarded to promising young Australian actors living in the United States in order to help their careers. Ledger’s father donates money to the scholarship every year.
  
  

Works

More photos

• movie

  • I'm Not There

    (An unconventional journey into the life and times of Bob ...)

    2007
  • Lords Of Dogtown

    (See how extreme sports got its start with this critically...)

    2005
  • The Order

    (Following a series of unexplained murders, a renegade pri...)

    2003
  • Monster's Ball

    (Halle Berry won an Oscar for her role in this intricate d...)

    2001
  • A Knight's Tale

    (A Knight's Tale is the rousing story of lowborn William T...)

    2001
  • Paws

    (In this charming family adventure, a talking Terrier with...)

    1997
  • The Dark Knight

    (The Dark Knight reunites Christian Bale with director Chr...)

    2008
  • The Brothers Grimm

    (Matt Damon and Heath Ledger team up to bring you one of t...)

    2005
  • Ned Kelly

    (Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, and Naomi Watts star in this...)

    2003
  • Candy

    (A poet (Heath Ledger) falls in love with an art student (...)

    2006
  • Blackrock

    (A beautiful beach community, a surfers paradise, the loca...)

    1997
  • The Patriot

    (A reluctant South Carolina farmer (Mel Gibson) is forced ...)

    2000
  • Brokeback Mountain

    (A ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy, meet in the summer of 19...)

    2005
  • 10 Things I Hate About You

    (On the first day at his new school, Cameron instantly fal...)

    1999
  • Four Feathers

    (Harry Feversham is a soldier with a bright future - until...)

    2002
  • Two Hands

    (But when Jimmy loses ten grand of dirty money, the underw...)

    1999
  • Casanova

    (The story of the legendary lover and his exploits with wo...)

    2005
  • The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus

    (A fantastical morality tale, set in the present day. It t...)

    2009

• TV series

  • Roar

    (Academy Award nominee Heath Ledger stars in Roar, one of ...)

    1997

Religion

Heath Ledger rarely touched upon religious topics. He once stated: "Now, I don't believe in Jesus, but I believe in my performance. And if you can understand that the power of belief is one of the great tools of our time and that a lot of acting comes from it, you can do anything."

Politics

Ledger never explicitly exposed his political views. In fact, he was sometimes accused of being non-political.

Views

Heath Ledger supported several charities, including ALAFA, LIFEbeat, and Variety - The Children’s Charity.

Quotations: "I'm not good at future planning. I don't plan at all. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. I don't have a day planner and I don't have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future."

"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."

"I like to do something I fear. I like to set up obstacles and defeat them. I like to be afraid of the project. I always am. When I get cast in something, I always believe I shouldn't have been cast. I fooled them again. I can't do it. I don't know how to do it. There's a huge amount of anxiety that drowns out any excitement I have toward the project."

"I start to get bored, not with the choices I was making because I didn't really have a choice. The choices were being made for me - I was being thrown into projects. So I kind of put the brakes on that. In a sense, I destroyed my career to rebuild it again."

Personality

Heath Ledger admitted to being an introvert and was painfully shy around new people. He explained that while he could pretend to be outgoing while acting, he had a hard time when just being himself. Since he was shy, it was thought that Ledger secretly liked being behind the camera more than he liked being in front of it. One of his hobbies was making home movies, and he would usually carry a video camera around.

Ledger was a great admirer of Johnny Depp's work. Like Depp, Ledger worked hard to avoid being typecast as a teen heartthrob early on, in the hopes of expanding his career options. Both actors enjoyed taking risky, physically unappealing roles that surprised audiences.

Ledger actually loved to dance. He was inspired by Gene Kelly, the famous actor, singer, and tap dancer who starred in musicals during the 1940s and 50s. While he never starred in a musical, Ledger shows off some of his moves in the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale and even has a little number in 10 Things I Hate About You.

Not only was Ledger a brilliant actor but was a brilliant chess player too, completing Australia’s junior chess championship only while he was 10 years of age.

Quotes from others about the person

• "I adored him. I don't know how to compare his talent to others but he's touched me deeply as a talent and it's a great loss - losing him at any age would be a loss but it was pretty rough news. I was really shocked by it." - John Travolta
  
  "It is tragic that we have lost one of our nation's finest actors in the prime of his life. Heath Ledger's diverse and challenging roles will be remembered as some of the great performances by an Australian actor." - Kevin Rudd

Interests

• Writing poetry, playing chess

• Writers

  The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

• Artists

  Johnny Depp, Gene Kelly

• Sport & Clubs

  Field hockey, surfing, skateboarding, Australian rules football, West Coast Eagles

• Music & Bands

  Spiderbait, Powderfinger, Silverchair

Connections

Over the course of his life, Ledger was romantically linked to a bevy of beautiful actresses, including Naomi Watts, Heather Graham, and even his 10 Things I Hate About You co-star Julia Stiles. But it was with another co-star, Michelle Williams, that he had one of his most important relationships. They met on the set of Brokeback Mountain and lived together until 2007. In 2005, they also had a child together, Matilda Rose Ledger.

Father:

Kim Ledger

Kim was a race-car driver ad mining engineer who left the house when his son was barely a teenager. He however remained close to his "ex-family" and was on good terms with the actor until his death.

Mother:

Sally Ledger Bell

ex-girlfriend:

Michelle Williams

In June 2004, Heath started a relationship with American actress Michelle Williams. They met while filming Brokeback Mountain (2005). On October 28, 2005, they were blessed with a daughter, Matilda Rose, who was born in New York City. However, in 2006, Heath’s drug abuse started to annoy Michelle. Eventually, Heath moved out of their apartment in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. Later, they separated amicably but their split was only confirmed in September 2007 by Michelle’s father.

ex-girlfriend:

Naomi Watts

In August 2002, Heath began dating British actress Naomi Watts. They acted in the movie, Ned Kelly (2003), together. Naomi even encouraged Heath to take up the role of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain (2005). However, they separated in May 2004.

Daughter:

Matilda Rose Ledger

Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, the actors who played variations of Heath Ledger’s character Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassius donated their salaries to Matilda Ledger, who was 2 years old at that time as a gesture of concern for her future because apparently, Heath had not updated his will to include Matilda before he died.

Sister:

Kate Ledger

half-sister:

Ashleigh Bell

half-sister:

Olivia Ledger

ex-girlfriend:

Julia Stiles

ex-girlfriend:

Heather Graham

Friend:

Mary-Kate Olsen

In January of 2008, Olsen made headlines when her close friend, actor Heath Ledger, died of a prescription drug overdose. Olsen was silent on the matter, but sources say Ledger's staff contacted Mary-Kate through a speed-dial function on Ledger's cell phone. Olsen then called her security staff in New York to investigate the matter. Ledger was pronounced dead later that day.

Friend:

Joaquin Phoenix

Heath Ledger was good friends with Joaquin Phoenix who would also play The Joker.

Friend:

Matt Damon

Friend:

Lindsay Lohan

Lindsay Lohan and Heath Ledger allegedly had a close bond. The details are blurry, but her diary reveals she was in love with Ledger around the time of his tragic death. On the day he died, Lohan wrote about how he was the love of her life, and how he taught her so much. She goes on to explain that he’s all she’s ever wanted and that she wants to hear him laugh and for him to hold her.

References

• Heath Ledger: Hollywood's Dark Star Heath Ledger was one of the most charismatic actors of his generation. After establishing a high-profile Hollywood career at the age of 21 with the lead in A Knight’s Tale, Ledger pursued a series of increasingly diverse, often subversive roles that belied his image as a teen idol. Here, Brian J. Robb explores Ledger’s relationships with actresses Michelle Williams, Naomi Watts, and Heather Graham, recounts the making of Brokeback Mountain and the film’s impact, and charts Ledger’s increasingly troubled state of mind. Heath Ledger: Hollywood's Dark Star paints a memorable portrait of a compelling and intense young man whose loss will be felt for years to come.
  2008
• Heath Ledger: His Beautiful Life and Mysterious Death Young, cocksure, handsome, and absurdly talented, Australian actor Heath Ledger shot to prominence with his first Hollywood film 10 Things I Hate About You: and a star was born. With huge charisma and smoldering looks lighting up the screen in a series of subsequent films, Heath was soon established as Hollywood A-list, dating a series of beauties such as Heather Graham and Naomi Watts, and living every young man's dream.
  2008