In "The Dark Knight," Ledger delivered his last complete film role before dying at the age of 28 from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs on Jan. 22,2008 in Manhattan.

His performance in the latest action-filled Batman flick has been shifted to centre stage, inflated by all the marketing fury of a big summer blockbuster, and even shaped into Heath's epitaph.

 

Drawing inspiration from sources as wide-ranging as Johnny Rotten and ventriloquists, Ledger's Clown Prince of Crime is anything but funny, instead, he's a sadistically gleeful force of nature who wants nothing more than to watch the world tear itself to pieces. Almost unrecognizable beneath his makeup, Ledger's scar-faced character is world apart from Jack Nicholson’s well-respected take on the character.

 

From facial tics to bad jokes, his devotion to the role took the Joker far from a garish comic book character to a nuanced madman that somehow does what every good villain can - makes you like him. Deemed a harrowing screen villain, the schizophrenic mass-murderer Ledger plays in "The Dark Knight" represented the biggest challenge of his career.

 

Ledger, who never played a villain before, was cast by movie director Christopher Nolan as the Joker "because he's fearless."

 

Heath Ledger was born as Heathcliff Andrew Ledger on April 4, 1979 in Perth, Australia to a mining engineer and a French teacher. He and his sister, Katherine, were named after the main characters’ in Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights.”

 

He started his acting career at sixteen with a role in the TV series “Sweat” (1996) in which he played a gay cyclist. He did many appearances in Australian series like “Ship to Shore,” “Bush Patrol” and “Corrigan.” Ledger began to be loved by the series audience. In 1997 he made his American television debut in the fantasy-drama “Roar” from Fox.

 

He got a lead role in the acclaimed Australian movie “Two hands” in 1998 which was followed in 1999 by the modern version of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”, “10 Things I hate about you” in which he co-starred along with Julia Stiles. Heath rejected roles in teen movies and landed a role in “The Patriot”, a revolutionary theme movie, where he played the role of the oldest son of Mel Gibson.

 

From here roles came pouring in. In 2001 he played in the medieval rock comedy “A Knight’s Tale”, followed by “Monster’s Ball,” “The Four Feathers,” “Ned Kelly,” “The Order,” and “Brothers Grimm” in which he co starred along with Matt Damon.

 

For “Brokeback Mountain” he received the award for “Best Actor of 2005” from the New York Film Critics Circle and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and a nomination for the Golden Globes and Academy Award for Best Actor in a drama.

 

In 2007 he was one of the six actors who portrayed Bob Dylan in the movie “I’m Not There.”