Heathcliff Andrew Ledger
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Awards
Heath Ledger, born April 4, 1979 in Perth, Australia, won a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight 2008. He earned a nomination for Brokeback Mountain 2005 and starred in 10 Things I Hate About You 1999. He died on January 22, 2008 at age 28 from an accidental overdose. His Joker performance earned over thirty awards, including the Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and SAG Award.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Heath Ledger — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Heath Ledger by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Heath Ledger — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Heath Ledger was born on April 4, 1979 in Perth, Western Australia to Sally Ramshaw, a French teacher, and Kim Ledger, a mining engineer and race car driver. His full birth name, Heathcliff Andrew Ledger, came from the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights. He attended Guildford Grammar School, an all-boys private school, where he chose drama over cooking when forced to pick an elective. At 17, he and a friend drove to Sydney with only 69 cents, determined to become an actor.
Ledger’s first major role was in the Australian crime thriller Two Hands 1999, which led to his Hollywood debut in 10 Things I Hate About You 1999. He took diverse parts: a colonial soldier in The Patriot 2000, a jousting peasant in A Knight’s Tale 2001, and a death row inmate in Monster’s Ball 2001. In Brokeback Mountain 2005, he played Ennis Del Mar and earned an Academy Award nomination. He then played the Joker in The Dark Knight 2008, winning the Oscar posthumously.
Ledger had a relationship with Julia Stiles during and after filming 10 Things I Hate About You 1999, and later dated Naomi Watts, who encouraged him to accept the role in Brokeback Mountain. He was engaged to actress Michelle Williams, whom he met on the set of Brokeback Mountain; their daughter Matilda Rose Ledger was born on October 28, 2005. He took a year off from acting in 2006 to raise her while Williams worked. He was good friends with Jake Gyllenhaal, Christian Bale, and Joaquin Phoenix.
Heath Ledger’s Joker performance won more than thirty awards, including the 2009 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor — the first posthumous acting Oscar in that category. He also won a Golden Globe, BAFTA, and SAG Award for the role. In 2008, Australians in Film established the annual Heath Ledger Scholarship. Ledger consistently chose risky roles and his portrayal of the Joker set a new standard for acting in genre films.
The complete filmography of Heath Ledger — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Heath Ledger — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
A wall of memorable lines from Heath Ledger — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
I Prefer to Date Older Women Because They Don’t Try to Act Older Like Younger Girls but Because They Try to Act Younger.
I Never Studied Acting in Australia. I Never Had an Empty Stage and Black Pajamas to Run Around and Express Myself.
Brooklyn Seems to Me the Closest Thing in America to Europe. the Neighbors and Locals Are Beautiful People. It’s Like a Village.
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 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.
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.
No Amount of Money Changes What I Do Between ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’. 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.
Honesty Always Gets My Attention. Not Particularly Someone Who Is Honest to Me, but Someone Who Is Honest with Themselves. That Is a Quality I Really Enjoy, Admire and Love.
Little-known facts about Heath Ledger — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law helped Terry Gilliam complete The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus 2009 by taking over Ledger’s unfinished role as a tribute. The three actors donated their salaries to his daughter.
Before a script for The Dark Knight 2008 existed, Ledger met with Christopher Nolan to exchange ideas about playing the Joker. Nolan’s first and only choice for the role was Ledger.
In an interview shortly before his death, Ledger stated that his favorite role so far had been the Joker in The Dark Knight 2008.
Ledger admired Johnny Depp’s work. Like Depp, he avoided being typecast as a teen heartthrob by choosing unexpected roles. Both actors took physically unappealing parts. Depp was one of three actors who completed Ledger’s role in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus 2009 after his death.
He directed both homemade videos made by the Joker in The Dark Knight 2008 himself.
He was awarded the 2009 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work as the Joker in The Dark Knight 2008. This made him the first person to win a posthumous acting Oscar in this category and the second person overall to win a posthumous Oscar.
For his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight 2008, Ledger won the Golden Globe, BAFTA, SAG, Critics’ Choice Award, and Oscar.
He turned down the role of Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2002.
As a child, he owned a pet kangaroo that was found by his mother.
He said the most difficult aspect of his performance as the Joker was getting the voice and laugh right.
In 2006, he took a year off from acting to raise his daughter Matilda Ledger while his then-fiancée Michelle Williams worked.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Busy Philipps are his daughter’s godparents.
He was good friends with Jake Gyllenhaal, Joel Edgerton, Christian Bale, Joaquin Phoenix, and Matt Damon.
He was the first performer to win an Oscar for acting in a comic movie adaptation.
The day after he died, he was scheduled to meet with Steven Spielberg to explore playing Tom Hayden in a movie about the Chicago 7.
He never attended drama school and had no formal training when he decided to pursue an acting career.
He received his Oscar nomination for The Dark Knight 2008 on the first anniversary of his death, January 22, 2009.
He was painfully shy.
He and his older sister Kate Ledger are named after the two main romantic characters of the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights.
After his death, his body was returned to Perth, Western Australia, where he was cremated at Fremantle Cemetery. His ashes were to be scattered in a family plot at Karrakatta Cemetery next to two of his grandparents.
His first acting role was as Peter Pan at age 10 at a local theater company.
He became a father at age 26 when his fiancée Michelle Williams gave birth to their daughter Matilda Ledger on October 28, 2005.
In both his first and final complete roles, he portrayed a clown.
His daughter Matilda Ledger will be the recipient of his Oscar for The Dark Knight 2008 when she turns 18. Up until then, the statuette is in custody of his father Kim Ledger, mother Sally Bell, and sister Kate Ledger per Academy rules.
He had been set to star in Baz Luhrmann’s pre-WWII drama Australia 2008 but backed out to play the Joker in The Dark Knight 2008.
He was only 4 years older than Kate Mara, who played his teenage daughter in Brokeback Mountain 2005.
He liked to write poetry.
He was encouraged by then-girlfriend Naomi Watts to accept the role of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain 2005.
He was the first non-American actor to portray the Joker.
He was found dead in his apartment at 421 Broome Street in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City at 3:26 p.m. EST by his housekeeper and a massage therapist, who found him face down and unconscious in his bed with sleeping pills on a nearby table.
He was planning to direct his first feature film based on the Walter Tevis 1983 novel The Queen’s Gambit.
He was the second person to win a posthumous acting Oscar; the first was Peter Finch.
In an interview, he admitted that he disliked his portrayal of the titular character in Casanova 2005, saying he took the wrong approach to the role.
He was the first actor to secure an acting nomination for a Batman film; Joaquin Phoenix later received an acting nomination for Joker 2019.
Ang Lee offered him the role of Ennis Del Mar after being impressed with his performance in Monster’s Ball 2001.
Among his hobbies were surfing, skateboarding, chess, photography, and directing.
He initially met with Christopher Nolan about playing Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman Begins 2005 but turned the part down. After seeing the film, he regretted his decision and immediately signed on to play the Joker.
He concentrated on drama and sports in school. When asked to choose between the two, he picked drama. He attended a private all-boys school called Guildford Grammar.
He did some of his own stunts; in The Four Feathers 2002 he leaps onto a horse at full gallop, and in Brokeback Mountain 2005 he jumps off a high cliff into icy water.
According to the 10th Anniversary commentary by his co-stars for 10 Things I Hate About You 1999, he and Julia Stiles began a relationship during filming. They broke up in January 2000.
On February 9, 2008, a memorial service attended by several hundred invited guests was held at Penhros College in Perth, Western Australia, followed by a private wake on Cottesloe Beach with his family and friends.
He pulled out of The Tree of Life 2011 before he died.
He was friends with Russell Crowe.
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis made a dedication to him at the SAG Awards 2008. Ledger was one of Day-Lewis’s favorite actors.
He was five years younger than Christian Bale, making him the first actor to play the Joker who was younger than the actor playing Batman.
He co-starred with a Gyllenhaal sibling in two major roles: with Jake in Brokeback Mountain 2005 and with Maggie in The Dark Knight 2008.
He was in relationships with Lisa Zane, Julia Stiles, Christina Cauchi, Heather Graham, Naomi Watts, Michelle Williams, and Gemma Ward.
His ancestry included English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and through his matrilineal great-great-grandmother, Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish. Through his Jewish great-great-grandmother Lillian May Solomon, he was a sixth cousin three times removed of actor and comedian Peter Sellers. He was also a relative of Daniel Mendoza, boxing champion of England in 1792-1795.
He was selected for the State U17 field hockey squad and considered a promising player, but quit to pursue acting.
In 2008, Australians in Film established the annual Heath Ledger Scholarship in his honor. Past judges include Jude Law, Rachel Griffiths, Jason Isaacs, Frances O’Connor, director Gregor Jordan, and Ledger’s former agent Steve Alexander.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Heath Ledger.
Celebrities similar to Heath Ledger — same craft, ranked by reach.
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