Heath Andrew Ledger (4 April 1979 – 22 January 2008) was an Australian television and film actor. He suffered an accidental death at age 28.

After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger moved to the United States in 1998 to develop his movie career further, acting in 19 films, including such critical and box-office successes as 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), Monster's Ball (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and The Dark Knight (2008). In addition to his work as an actor and as a producer and director of music videos, he also aspired to be a film director.

For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger won the 2005 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the 2006 "Best Actor" award from the Australian Film Institute and was nominated for the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor and the 2006 Best Actor award from the BAFTA, as well as won an MTV Movie Award with Jake Gyllenhaal, for their "best kiss" in the film. He also received several award nominations for his work in Two Hands (1999), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), A Knight's Tale (2001), Ned Kelly (2003), and Candy (2006). Posthumously, on 23 February 2008, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director of the film I'm Not There, inspired by the life and songs of Bob Dylan, in which he plays a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of the Dylan legend.

A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his widely-praised penultimate performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight. At the time of his death, he had also completed about half of the work for his final performance, the role of Tony in Terry Gilliam's forthcoming film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Family and personal life

Heath Ledger was born on 4 April 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, the son of Sally Ledger Bell (née Ramshaw), a French teacher, and Kim Ledger, a racing-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. Ledger attended Mary's Mount Primary School, in Gooseberry Hill, and later Guildford Grammar School, where he had his first acting experiences, starring in a school production as Peter Pan at age 10. His parents separated when he was 10 and divorced when he was 11. 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.