Who thought that the teenager from ‘10 things I hate about you’ would grow up to wreck havoc and give nightmares to the people of Gotham.
Born to father Kim Ledger, a race car driver, and mother Sally Ledger Bell, a french teacher on April 4, 1979, Heath Ledger had a passion for playing chess, and at the age of 10, he had won the ‘Western Australia’s Junior Chess Championship’.
At the age of 11, Heath’s parents decided to split, causing the actor to go through severe emotional distress. The only escape that he found, was acting.
He played various characters in several school plays, dreaming of one day ‘making it to the big screen’.
At 16 years of age, Heath travelled across the country to Sydney in a bid to pursue his acting career. After working in a pilot series titled Roar; a medieval fantasy co-starring Keri Russell, Heath sought out an American agent travelled to Los Angeles at the age of 19.
Landing a role in ‘Two Hands’, Heath got the much needed boost in the US industry, but that came with a price as he was tagged as ‘pretty boy’, an image that he worked so hard to get rid of.
Two hands eventually helped the actor land a role in ‘10 things I hate about you’. That eventually it helped him land quite a few roles. Next came The Patriot (2000), a serious war-drama that Heath accepted to get rid of his ‘pretty boy’ image.
After accepting any role he was offered to get recognision, Heath finally found the one character that raised him to fame. In 2005, Heath’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ was released, a story of two cowboys and their ‘forbidden’ relationship.
From there onwards, Heath was a household name, but was more commonly referred to as Ennis Del Mar, the cowboy from Brokeback.
Auditioning for a part in ‘The Dark Knight’, Heath got the role of the ‘Clown Prince of Crime’. Both, director Christopher Nolan and Heath, got immense criticism for the casting, but despite the disapproval, Nolan stuck with Heath for one reason, as Nolan said, “Because he’s fearless.”
The film was critically acclaimed everywhere, and one thing the critics, the fans, even the haters were ready to accept was that Heath Ledgers portrayal of the joker was incredible.
“Let’s put a smile on that face. Wanna know how I got these scars?” These are just some dialogues that got stuck in everyone’s heads, along with an image of a frightening man covered in makeup, destroying the city of Gotham and all that with a blood-red smile on his face.
Heath’s acting in The Dark Knight was so astounding that he won almost every award in the category. But, sadly, Heath Ledger died before he could even see the success of what he had created.
Ledger was found unconscious in his bed by his housekeeper, Teresa Solomon, On January 22, 2008. Some even blame ‘The Joker’ for Heath’s death, claiming that he got so involved in the role that it began to take a toll on him.
Heath himself discussed the difficulty of portraying The Joker, a character he described as a mass-murdering, schizophrenic, psychopathic clown with zero empathy.
But eventually, the cause of death was determined to be overdose. The autopsy report found traces of hydrocodone, diazepam, doxylamine, oxycodone, alprazolam and temazepam in his body.
Heath Ledger may have died earlier than everyone expected, but he left us with some amazing characters that one can simply not get enough of. As his sister, during the Oscar acceptance speech, said, he created something incredible, something that no one can ever forget.