Heath Ledger (April 4, 1979 – January 22, 2008) was an Academy Award-winning, Australian actor best known for his roles in Brokeback Mountain and The Dark Knight. After playing roles in several Australian television and film productions during the 1990s, he moved to the United States in 1998 to further develop his film career.
Ledger was born in Perth, Australia, on April 4, 1979, to mother Sally Ledger Bell, a French teacher, and father Kim Ledger, a racecar driver and mining specialist. He and his sister, Kate, were reportedly named after two main characters in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. He also had two half-sisters: Ashleigh Bell and Olivia Ledger, both of whom were born into his parents’ second marriages. But Ledger’s closest family relationship was with Kate, whom he later credited for spurring his acting career.
Early in life, Ledger found a passion for playing chess. At the age of 10, he won Western Australia’s Junior Chess Championship. It was around this time that he found an interest in becoming a stage performer, as he performed the lead role in Guildford Grammar School’s production of Peter Pan.
Unfortunately, while Ledger was enjoying this busy life of a 10-year-old, his parents found themselves growing apart. That year his parents would separate, before getting divorced when Heath was 11.
By the time he was a teenager, Ledger was already taking acting seriously. He left school at 16 to pursue it full-time, eventually landing roles in Australian TV shows like Sweat and Home and Away. Here are some rarely seen photos of Heath Ledger when he was a kid in the 1980s:
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