Everything about Heath Ledger totally explained
Heath Andrew Ledger (
April 4,
1979 –
January 22,
2008) was an
Academy Award-,
BAFTA-,
Golden Globe-, and
SAG Award-nominated
Australian film and television
actor. 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"
He completed filming his role as the
Joker in the forthcoming movie
The Dark Knight, shortly before dying, on
January 22,
2008, 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. Posthumously, on
February 23,
2008, he shared the
Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the cast and crew of the film
I'm Not There, in which he portrayed a character named "Robbie Clark", based on a stage in the life of
Bob Dylan.
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. and later
Guildford Grammar School, where he'd his first acting experiences, starring in a school production as
Peter Pan at age 10. 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.
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. 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.
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 stages in the life of
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. 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.
After his performance on stage at the
2005 Screen Actors Guild Awards, when he'd 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'd been told that he'd be presenting the award only minutes earlier; he stated: "I am so sorry and I apologise for my nervousness. I'd 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. Yet
The Gazz qualifies its newspaper's report somewhat further in adding, "though you've 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'd taken two
Ambien pills, after taking just one hadn't sufficed, and those left him in "a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing."
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. He was pronounced dead at 3:36 PM, and his body removed from the apartment, while crowds of onlookers began gathering outside throughout that night. 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." The Medical Examiner's Office also announced that it wouldn't 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
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", 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." 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's 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's 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 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.
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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
Awards and nominations
Academy Awards
Australian Film Institute Awards
BAFTA
Golden Globe Awards
Independent Spirit Awards
MTV Movie Awards
Screen Actors Guild Awards
Further Information
Get more info on 'Heath Ledger'.
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