Heath Ledger

At 28 years old, Heath Ledger has this physical status:

Heath Andrew Ledger (4 April 1979 – January 2008) was an Australian actor and music video producer.

Ledger, who appeared in a number of Australian television and film productions during the 1990s, moved to the United States in 1998 to continue developing his film career.

He made nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2004), The Brothers Grimm (2005), The Golden Knight (2008), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), the former two being posthumous releases.

Ledger also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director. He received the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the Best International Actor Award from the Australian Film Institute; he was the first actor to win the latter award posthumously.

He was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Best Actor in a Leading Role and the Academy Award for Best Actor.

He distributed the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the remainder of the ensemble cast, producer, and casting director for the film I'm Not There, which was inspired by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's life and songs.

Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters depicting elements of Dylan's life and persona.

Ledger had finished filming his appearance as the Joker in The Dark Knight a few months before his death.

The Dark Knight was in its editing process at the time of his death, and Doctor Parnassus' Imaginarium was in the midst of filming, in which he was playing his last role as Tony.

The Dark Knight's subsequent promotion was also influenced by his untimely death.

Fans and commentators alike praise him for his role as The Joker in The Dark Knight.

Ledger has received numerous prestigious awards for his role in The Dark Knight, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Early life and education

Heath Andrew Ledger was born in Perth, Western Australia, to Sally Ramshaw, a French teacher, and Kim Ledger, a racing car designer and mining engineer whose family established and owned Ledger Engineering Foundry. After his great-grandfather's name, the Sir Frank Ledger Charitable Trust was established. He had ancestry in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Ledger attended Mount Primary School in Gooseberry Hill and later Guildford Grammar School, where he had his first acting experience when playing Peter Pan in a school production at age ten. His parents divorced when he was ten years old and divorced when he was eleven years old. Ledger's older sister, an actor and later a publicist, influenced his acting on stage, and Gene Kelly's admiration of Gene Kelly inspired his triumphant choreography, resulting in Guildford Grammar's "first all-boy triumph" at the Rock Eistedfod Challenge. Ashleigh Bell (b) is one of Ledger's two half-sisters. Olivia Ledger (b. 1990), his mother's daughter with her second husband and his stepfather Roger Bell. Emma Brown, his father's daughter, was born in 1996.

Personal life

Ledger, a chess player, was an avid participant who had played in tournaments since childhood. He used to play with other chess enthusiasts at Washington Square Park in Manhattan as an adult. Ledger, a fan of the West Coast Eagles, an Australian rules football team that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), is based in Perth, Australia's national football team.

Ledger was a "obsessive" photographer who loved photographing stills and then went back to them and scribbled with paint, markers, or nail polish.

Ledger had friendships with Lisa Zane, Heather Graham, and Naomi Watts.

After meeting on the set of Brokeback Mountain in 2004, he began a friendship with actress Michelle Williams. Matilda Rose, the couple's daughter, was born in New York City on October 28th. Jake Gyllenhaal and Williams' Dawson's Creek co-star Busy Philipps are Matilda's godparents. Ledger sold his Bronte, New South Wales, home to the United States, where he rented a house with Williams from 2005 to 2007. Williams' father announced to The Daily Telegraph in September that Ledger and Williams had broken up in September.

Ledger was romantically linked by the tabloid press and other public media after his breakup with Williams. Helena Christensen and Gemma Ward were both syphilistic. Ward said in 2011 that the two families had started dating in November 2007 and that their families had spent the year together in Perth, WA.

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Acting career

Ledger dropped out of school to pursue an acting career after sitting for early graduation exams at the age 16 to get his diploma. Ledger, Trevor DiCarlo, his closest friend since the age of three, traveled from Perth to Sydney, where he appeared in Clowning Around (1992), the first part of a two-part television series, and to work on the television show Sweat (1996), in which he played a cyclist. Ledger appeared in many of Perth's most successful television shows from 1993 to 1997; and in the Australian film Blackrock (1997), his debut film performance. In 1999, he appeared in the teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You and in the critically acclaimed Australian crime film Two Hands, directed by Gregor Jordan.

He appeared in supporting roles as Gabriel Martin, Benjamin Martin's eldest son (Mel Gibson), and Sonny Grotowski, Hank Grotowski's nephew, in Monster's Ball (2001), as well as leading or leading roles in A Knight's Tale (2001), Lords of Dogtown (2004), and Lords of Dogtown (2005). In 2001, he was named "Male Star of Tomorrow" by a ShoWest Award.

Both the New York Film Critics Circle and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle have lauded Ledger's work 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, as "Best Actor of 2005." He also received nominations for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, a BAFTA Award for Outstanding Actor in a Leading Role, and an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, making him the eight youngest nominee in the category at age 26. "Both Mr. Gregor is the protagonist in this New York Times review of the film" "Both Mr.," writer Stephen Holden writes. Mr. Gyllenhaal and Ledger make this enthralling love tale all about. Mr. Ledger's lean, sinewy body mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy characterization. It's a good screen job, as good as Marlon Brando and Sean Penn's best work." "Ledger's magnificent appearance in Rolling Stone is an acting miracle," Peter Travers says. He seems to be tearing it from his insides. Ledger doesn't just know how Ennis moves, speaks, and listens; he knows how he breathes; To feel the agony of love lost, it is to see him inhale the stench of a shirt hanging in Jack's closet.

Ledger costarred with Australian Abbie Cornish in the 2006 Australian film Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction as young heroin addicts in love trying to kick back from their heroin use, and whose mentor, Dan Ledger, was nominated for three "Best Actor" awards, including one for the Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards, which included two young heroin addicts in love, which both Cornish and Rush were recognized in their respective categories. Ledger was accepted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences shortly after the launch of Candy. Ledger, a moody, counter-culture actor who portrays Dylan's life in the 2007 film I'm Not There, directed by Todd Haynes, has received praise for his portrayal of 'Robbie [Clark], a moody, counter-culture actor who portrays Dylan's romantic side of Dylan, but says awards are never his motivation." He announced the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award alongside the rest of the film's ensemble cast, its producer, and its casting director.

Ledger appeared in Christopher Nolan's 2008 film The Dark Knight, which was released just over six months after his death, as the Joker in his penultimate film role. Ledger, a London-based filmmaker, told Sarah Lyall in their New York Times interview that he thinks The Dark Knight's Joker is a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with no sympathy." Ledger received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (becoming the fourth-youngest winner of the competition), as well as a number of other prestigious awards, such as the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, which Nolan accepted for him. Ledger had completed about half of the film for his last film role as Tony in Terry Gill's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, at the time of his death on January 22, 2008. After his death, Gilliam decided to film it, ensuring that Ledger's last appearance could be seen in theatres.

Ledger had aspirations to become a film director and had produced some music videos with his production company The Masses, which director Todd Haynes lauded greatly for his gratitude to Ledger for receiving the ISP Robert Altman Award, which Ledger graciously posted on February 23, 2008. Ledger produced music videos for Australian hip hop artist N'fa's debut solo album Cause An Effect, as well as the single "Seduction Is Evil (She's Hot)" in 2006. Ledger's new record company, The Masses Music, was launched in late 2005, starring singer Ben Harper and also produced a music video for Harper's song "Morning Yearning."

Ledger, a British singer-songwriter who died in 1974 at the age of 26, died of an antidepressant overdose at a news conference at the 2007 Venice Film Festival. Ledger created and performed in a music video set to Drake's 1974 song "Black Eyed Dog" (originally), and secondly at the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, "a series of short filmed tributes to Nick Drake," sponsored by American Cinematheque at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood on October 5th. "Black Eyed Dog" was on the internet and excerpted in news clips distributed via YouTube following Ledger's death.

He was filming with Scottish screenwriter and producer Allan Scott on a 1983 film version of Walter Tevis' "The Queen's Gambit," which would be his first feature film as a director. He also wanted to act in the film, with Canadian actor Elliot Page suggested in the lead role. Ledger's last directorial film, in which he shot two music videos before his death, premiered in 2009. Modest Mouse and Grace Woodroofe's music videos include an animated version of Modest Mouse's "King Rat" and a Woodroofe video for her interpretation of David Bowie's "Quicksand." On August 4, 2009, the "King Rat" video premiered.

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