Heath Ledger only lived to be 28 years old. Film clips from Heath Ledger’s films as well as interviews with his early school day friends, fellow artists from the film industry such as Terry Gilliam, and especially Heath Ledger’s father paint a very personal picture of the century talent Heath Ledger. “I think this was just a whole new level”.
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Back in 2013, a clip from an impending German documentary about actor Heath Ledger surfaced online that showed Ledger’s father Kim Ledger thumbing through his son’s “Joker diary”, which he kept while developing his now iconic (and Oscar-winning) iteration of the Batman villain in The Dark Knight.
There are also several stills from A Clockwork Orange – Kubrick’s film clearly being a big influence – along with joker cards, photos of hyenas, unhinged clown make-up and the word “chaos” highlighted in green. According to his father, Ledger went to great lengths to ensure that his take on the character was both authentic and different than any we’ve seen before, including sequestering himself for a month to get into Joker’s head. The diary reveals a dark insight into his research for the part. The latter is obviously written in character, containing a list of things that include “blind babies”, “land mines”, “AIDS”, “beloved pets in bad road accidents”, “statistics”, “brunch” and “the periodic table of elements”.
There is a dedicated section to the harrowing hospital scene in Batman, when he dressed up as a nurse to visit Harvey Dent in hospital before blowing up the building.
Ledger died in January 2008 at the age of 28.
Ledger was posthumously awarded the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Joker.
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