His was the first unexpected celebrity death of the Internet age, where news travels instantly around the world, feeding a ceaseless 24-hour hunger for information. As a result, during the initial stages of the investigation into the circumstances of his passing, much misinformation was presented as fact, and speculation as to the cause of death and Ledger’s lifestyle was rife.

          Heath was hailed as various things, from the new Mel Gibson to the new Marlon Brando. He was a poster boy for heroic action movies like A Knight’s Tale and a thoughtful actor who played minor roles in art-house movies like Monster’s Ball and I’m Not There. Even during his beginnings in the clever – but ultimately disposable – teen flick 10 Things I Hate About You, Heath harboured artistic ambitions that Hollywood seemed ultimately unable to fulfil. Despite his teen movie start and lack of formal training, Ledger grew into a serious actor, someone who wanted to be challenged by his craft and to lose himself in his roles.

          ‘I was eighteen-years-old,’ he remembered of his start in American movies. ‘The idea of being an Australian from Perth and getting offered a movie with Touchstone Pictures? I was like, “Who gives a fuck? Put me in your movie!” I thought, If I don’t take this, maybe nothing will ever happen.’

          Despite his enthusiasm, Heath was not simply dazzled by the offer of a big part in a studio movie. He knew it would give him his start, maybe even put him on the map, but he had bigger ambitions and he also knew that he could only rely on himself and his own innate talents to realise them. ‘It still often feels like a whole load of bullshit,’ he admitted of the film industry, ‘and just acknowledging that puts me at ease. When I first worked in the industry, it seemed so unbelievably foreign and surreal. The differences between good and bad people were so extreme. The way some people treated others, or held themselves so falsely high, disgusted me, and I promised myself I’d never become like that.’

          The young actor quickly took stock of Hollywood and didn’t much like what he saw. Hard as it was to resist, Ledger wanted to avoid being sucked into that superficial and profit-driven way of life. ‘From 18 to 22, I was alone, living in LA with a bunch of friends, partying. I don’t know if I knew, or cared to know, what I was capable of back then. I guess I’m just starting to, for lack of a better word, care more,’ he said of his need to move beyond teen roles and into challenging adult parts.

          Movie executive Amy Pascal was supervising production of The Patriot when she singled Heath out for stardom on a scale he scarcely could’ve imagined – or wanted. ‘You always know when you meet somebody who’s going to be a movie star, because they sparkle,’ she told Interview magazine. ‘As much as Heath sometimes tried to hide his sparkle, it just came through. It was that boyish, sexy, misunderstood, James Dean thing that we all are always looking for. He had it.’

          Ledger proactively ‘destroyed’ his ‘manufactured’ career, feeling he had to be seen to fail in some big movie before he’d be allowed to go off and do his own thing artistically. It was the only way the young actor could see to escape from the teen idol tag that was attached to him. ‘It was like I diverted off the map and took a back road to the place I wanted to get to,’ he said, describing his risky route to artistic achievement. ‘I’m on a journey. I’m on a walkabout [an Australian aboriginal coming-of-age ritual]. A lot of people think ambition or success, and they think dollars... My success is getting underneath that. At the end of the day, that’s the only thing you’re going to carry with you when you die.’

          On the set of Ned Kelly he struck up a relationship with Naomi Watts, and it was her who urged him to accept a role that had been seemingly turned down by every young actor in Hollywood: Ennis Del Mar, the ranch hand who falls in love with a male rodeo rider in 1960s America. His CAA agent, Steve Alexander, recalled: ‘He wanted to take parts that were more complicated and more difficult. He wanted to play characters that he could disappear into and not [be] the leading man, which might have been an easier path for him. I think that started with Monster’s Ball, and then obviously, when he decided he would take on the part of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain.’

          Ang Lee also recognised the latent talent Ledger was beginning to show. ‘He had that macho, western, non-verbal, turn-of-the-last-century aura,’ said the Brokeback director of his leading man. ‘He carries both aggression and fear, like two sides of a blade.’

          For the first time, Heath threw himself body and soul into playing a role, a habit he was to continue to indulge for the rest of his career, much to his mental and physical detriment.

          Untrained as an actor, and with very limited juvenile stage work, Ledger was learning his craft on the job. Part of his desire to seek out roles in unusual films was a need to challenge himself, to make sure that in acting terms, at least, he kept himself fresh. ‘I don’t have a technique,’ Heath claimed of his approach to movies. ‘I’ve never been a believer in having one set technique on how to act. There are no rules and there is no rulebook. At the end of the day, it all comes down to my instincts. That’s the one thing that guides me through every decision professionally. That’s my technique. You read through the script 100 times. I guess I have little characteristics about myself. Sometimes, most often than not, once we start shooting I won’t look at the script at all until we finished shooting. It’s kind of like it’s been imprinted in my head during rehearsals. You just let it go.’

          Letting go didn’t come easily to Heath. Starting with Brokeback Mountain, he deliberately immersed himself in each character he played, absorbing something of them into his very personality. For most roles, like Ennis, or Casanova, this didn’t present too much of a problem. But for an uncompromisingly dark characterisation like that of the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight, the implications for Heath’s mental health were a little more serious. ‘I’m always gonna pull myself apart and dissect it,’ said Ledger of his on-screen work. ‘I mean, there’s no such thing as perfection in what we do. Pornos are more perfect than we are, because they’re actually fucking.’

          Heath often felt something of a fraud, as if he’d fallen into acting by mistake and would be found out at any moment. ‘I always go through the process of hating it [the role], hating myself, thinking I’ve fooled them, I can’t actually do this.’ Even his Oscar nomination for Brokeback Mountain did not put Heath’s mind at rest about his own talents. ‘I’ve never been in a movie that people liked so much, so I’m really suspicious of it,’ he said of the unanimous critical success. In fact, his success only added to his stress. An unnamed English film director told New York magazine: ‘He was in a terribly anxious state during the Oscars. The day after the Oscars, he said to me, “I’ll never make another good film again.” If this was what happened when you made a good film, he didn’t think it was worth it. He found the whole thing absolutely harrowing. I think that after the Oscars, there was a kind of corner turned — and not a very good one.’

          Heath was a big sufferer of performance anxiety when it came to his screen craft, and it was something he always had to overcome. ‘Performance comes from absolutely believing what you’re doing. You convince yourself, and believe in the story with all your heart. I believe in my performance. And if you can understand that the power of belief is one of the great tools of our time and that a lot of acting comes from it, you can do anything. Your personal evolution runs hand in hand with your professional evolution. Performance and the person you are kind of grow simultaneously.’ Occasionally, though, Heath’s belief in his own performances would falter, causing him worry well beyond the call of duty.

          Finishing Brokeback, and feeling stressed out at the demands the part had made on him, Ledger immediately flew to Venice to start work on the light-hearted period romp Casanova. However, his return to Australia to shoot harrowing drug addiction drama Candy brought the actor a new series of challenges. In preparing for the part, Ledger researched with real-life drug addicts and convincingly denied he’d had any experience of drugs himself, beyond smoking pot. After his death, allegations of a hard-partying, drug-dependant lifestyle emerged, revealing a new aspect of his character.

          Heath Ledger’s final months were fraught and difficult. Over the years he’d enjoyed a variety of high-profile relationships, often with other actresses or co-stars significantly older than he was. His initial romance was with his TV co-star Lisa Zane, who helped bring him to the US. A dalliance with Australian model Christina Cauchi was an on-off affair, but he had other relationships in between reunions with Cauchi, such as those with actresses Heather Graham and Naomi Watts. Finally, Heath settled down with actress (and Brokeback Mountain co-star) Michelle Williams, two years his junior, and they had a daughter, Matilda, who was two-years-old when he died. In the fall of 2007, Ledger and Williams split up, causing Heath untold anguish. He’d thrown himself deeply into his work that year, playing the role of the Joker in The Dark Knight. ‘I want it to be a very sinister kind of thing,’ Heath said of his Joker. ‘I definitely have something up my sleeve. I just instantly had an idea of how to do it.’

          Ledger’s immersion in the mind of the psychopathic Joker, combined with ongoing harassment from the paparazzi (which he had suffered more intensively than ever since Brokeback Mountain, especially in Australia), his anxiety and continued inability to relax or sleep, plus his worries about his future relationship with his daughter, troubled the actor deeply. Indeed, it seems that no one knew quite how deeply until it was too late. ‘He had uncontrollable energy,’ said Michelle Williams. ‘He buzzed. He would jump out of bed. For as long as I’d known him, he’d had bouts with insomnia. He just had too much energy. His mind was turning, turning, turning — always turning.’

          Heath Ledger’s reliance on prescription medicines was growing, and it was this that would lead to his unexpected and tragic death on 22 January 2008, during the shooting of his final film, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The worldwide outpouring of shock and grief that followed showed what an impact the young actor had made on audiences and the Hollywood movie business. At only 28-years-old, Heath Ledger was gone, at a time when it was clear he had so much more to give. His life was short, but he’d packed a lot of living in.

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