Heath Andrew Ledger was born in Perth, Western Australia, to Sally Ramshaw, a French teacher, and Kim Ledger, a mining engineer and race car driver, and whose family established and owned the Ledger Engineering Foundry. Ledger attended Mary’s Mount Primary School in Gooseberry Hill, and later Guildford Grammar School, where he got his first taste of acting, starring in a school production as Peter Pan at the age of just ten.
Soon after graduating with his diploma, at the age of 17, Ledger packed up and left school together Trevor DiCarlo, his best friend since the age of three, to pursue an acting career in Sydney; only to return back to Perth a short while later to take his first ever acting job – a small role in Clowning Around in 1992. From there onwards, he kept receiving small part roles in various TV series. He made his feature film debut in 1997 with a small role in the Australian film Blackrock, a largely unimpressive but moderately successful movie.
However, his true acting talent wasn’t recognised until he was auditioned for the leading role in Two Hands, the highly acclaimed 1999 comedy crime film. The film’s success also landed him the lead role in 10 Things I Hate About You, which also came out later that same year. Unfortunately, his success in these films led to him being typecast as a young hunk, which is something he absolutely hated. As a result, he began accepting practically every character role that came his way.
In total he starred in nine films between 2000 and 2005, with very inconsistent results. These included supporting roles in The Patriot, and Monster’s Ball; and leading or title roles in A Knight’s Tale, The Four Feathers, The Order, Ned Kelly, Casanova, The Brothers Grimm, and Lords of Dogtown.
It wasn’t until later in 2005 that the world was treated to Ledger’s true talent. This came in the form of his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in the film Brokeback Mountain. Following Brokeback Mountain, Ledger starred in the 2006 Australian film Candy, as well as one of six actors embodying different aspects of the life of Bob Dylan in the 2007 film I’m Not There.
Unfortunately, the world would not bear witness to Ledger’s crowning achievement till after his death. He was found dead at his apartment in the Manhattan neighbourhood of SoHo, on January 22, 2008. A report released a couple of weeks after his death, concluded that he had died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. His death occurred while The Dark Knight was still in post-production and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
The Dark Knight was released six months after Ledger’s death to massive critical acclaim. It is, in fact, considered to be one of the best films of its decade and one of the best superhero films of all time. It effectively cemented comic book movies as a bankable genre and singlehandedly paved the way for the success of franchises such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At the centre of it all was Heath Ledger’s Joker, widely considered to be his finest ever performance and one of the best portrayals of the comic supervillain to ever grace the silver screen. Not surprisingly, Ledger received more than thirty posthumous accolades for his performance.
Thankfully for Ledger’s fans, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus also eventually resumed filming. The film’s director Terry Gilliam, chose to adapt the film by having actors Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell play “fantasy transformations” of Ledger’s character so that his final performance could be seen in theatres.
In 2020, The Dark Knight was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” forever cementing his legacy in one of the greatest films of all time.