This is a website dedicated to the life of the actor Heath Ledger, who left this world too soon.
Heathcliffe Andrew Ledger
4th April 1979-22nd January 2008
He was born at the Subiaco Hospital in Perth, Western Australia. The Ledger name was well-known in Perth, the family having run a foundry that provided much of the raw material for the famous Perth to Kalgoorlie Pipeline, which ran 557 kilometres east out into the desert and, beginning to pump back in 1903, first supplied the Western Australian goldfields and now served over 100,000 people and 6 million sheep in 44,000 square miles. The Sir Frank Ledger Charitable Trust, named after Heath's great-grandfather, was renowned for granting funds to the area's universities, paying for visiting lecturers and scholarships for gifted students.
Having seen sister Kate onstage with Perth's Shakespearean troupe at the Globe theatre, he'd yearned to get up there himself and, at age 10, he did, taking the lead in the theatre's production of Peter Pan. At Guildford Grammar, given the choice of cooking or drama, he naturally picked the latter. Several teachers actively discouraged him but this just made him angry and all the more determined. As would be the norm throughout his life, he would learn rapidly.Ledger as yet had no clear idea of a screen career, but he was aware of the possibility, certainly enough to get himself taken on by his sister's agent. As an extra he'd appeared in 1992's Clowning Around, starring Ernie Dingo, where a kid ran off to join the circus, and, a year later had popped up in Ship To Shore, a kind of Australian Happy Days, both productions having been filmed in Perth. Come 1995, though, matters became more serious when Ledger joined the cast of the TV series Sweat, again shot in Perth. This would deal with the routines, temptations, disappointments and triumphs of a group of kids at an elite sports academy.
Though only 16, he'd win a small role in the movie Blackrock where a schoolboy witnesses a rape and murder and must hold his tongue so as not to betray his friends. With money being short, he even took a part in long-running soap Home And Away. Ledger would appear in several episodes as Scott Irwin, a rough-boy surfer-type who hides a shameful secret and commits assuault when he's framed and excluded from school.
The big breakthrough, though, would come with Roar. This was a US-financed medieval fantasy, where Ledger would star as Conor, a Celtic prince who, often clad only in a loincloth, each week struggles with a new girl and a new, sometimes magical enemy as he attempts to unite the warring clans and rid Britain of Roman invaders.
He then won the lead in Gregor Jordan's Two Hands. Here he'd play Jimmy, a low-grade hustler in suburban Sydney, dreaming of success in the criminal underworld.
Back in Hollywood, he now scored a part most young actors would kill for. 10 Things I Hate About You, co-starring teen-of-the-moment Julia Stiles, was a broad-stroke rewrite of Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew, set in High School. Stiles would play the beautiful but difficult shrew who must be persuaded to go to the prom so her younger sister can also attend. Thus the sister's boyfriend hires class maverick Ledger, a rebel with a winning smile, to steal Stiles' heart and take her to the dance. Naturally, after a series of verbal sparrings, they fall for one another, then she discovers the plot
Ledger's next outing would be another success. This was A Knight's Tale, written and directed by Brian Helgeland who'd won an Oscar for his LA Confidential screenplay. Here Ledger would play a squire who, his livelihood threatened when his master dies, illegally takes on the mantle of knight and, abetted by a crew of friends and Paul Bettany's hilariously flamboyant Geoffrey Chaucer, battles evil Rufus Sewell for a jousting title and the hand of a nobleman's daughterIn Monster's Ball he had the role of the sensitive son of prison guard Billy Bob Thornton. Unable to stand the jibes of his father and racist grandfather Peter Boyle, and painfully disturbed by the hideous work he's expected to carry out on Death Row, he blows himself away, thus acting as a catalyst for Thornton's own redemption. It was a small part, but pivotal and Ledger, for the first time, showed he had it in him to be a genuine character actor.
Ledger would return to Australia for his next movie, Ned Kelly, which would see him reunite with director Gregor Jordan.
Awaiting release was Candy,that saw Ledger and Abbie Cornish as a beautiful young couple who, with the help of mentor Geoffrey Rush, begin to experiment with drugs and wind up addicted to heroin. Both escaping their past pain, they're bound together by fear and addiction, but also by love, a love that's severely tested when Cornish begins to lose her mind.
It brought a far larger audience than might've been expected due to Ledger's major success with Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. Based on a short story by E. Annie Proulx, this was set in 1963 Wyoming with Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as young ranch-hands tending animals on the mountain of the title. Drawn to each other, they have sex but cannot accept their sexuality, particularly Ledger, brainwashed into denial by his monstrously homophobic father. However, when both are later married and settled into "normal" lives, Gyllenhaal throws off his sexual shackles and goes looking for Ledger, beginning a not-so-secret long-term affair that torments Ledger and destroys his rightly suspicious wife, Michelle Williams.Though ostensibly about a forbidden gay love affair, the movie really concerned the living of lies and the denial of self and thus it found a massive audience. Still, given the religious climate in middle America, Ledger and Gyllenhaal were taking a mighty risk and deserved the accolades they received, Ledger being nominated for a Golden Globe.Beyond the accolades, Brokeback Mountain would also bring Ledger a wife in Michelle Williams, formerly the star of TV hit Dawson's Creek. She, like her husband, had left school early and sought a new life of her own. She, too, would be nominated for a Golden Globe for her efforts in Brokeback Mountain, having already borne Ledger a daughter, Matilda RoseNext, he played the world's greatest seducer of women in Lasse Hallstrom's Casanova. I'm Not There,the Bob Dylan movie was released in (2007) The Dark Knight in which Ledger played The Joker will be released in Summer this year.
Heath will not be forgotten..
..
