Heath Andrew Ledger was an Australian actor. 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. His work consisted of 20 films in a variety of genres, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2001), Casanova (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Candy (2006), I'm Not There (2007), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), the latter two of which were posthumously released. He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
Ledger at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival
Ledger (far right) posing with the cast and the director of I'm Not There at the 64th Venice Film Festival in September 2007
Ledger at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2006
Memorial for Ledger, outside 421 Broome Street, SoHo, Manhattan, 23 January 2008
10 Things I Hate About You
10 Things I Hate About You is a 1999 American teen romantic comedy film directed by Gil Junger in his film directorial debut and starring Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Larisa Oleynik. The screenplay by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith is a modernization of William Shakespeare's comedy The Taming of the Shrew, retold in a late-1990s American high school setting. The film follows new student Cameron James (Gordon-Levitt) who is smitten with Bianca Stratford (Oleynik) and attempts to get bad boy Patrick Verona (Ledger) to date her antisocial sister Kat (Stiles) in order to get around her father's strict rules on dating. Named after a poem Kat writes about her romance with Patrick, the film was mostly shot in the Seattle metropolitan area, with many scenes filmed at Stadium High School in Tacoma, Washington.
Theatrical release poster