Before he died, Heath Ledger was planning to direct The Queen's Gambit
Heath Ledger is remembered for his Joker, but the chess-loving Australian who hustled games in Washington Square Park was also preparing to become a director. His first feature was meant to be an adaptation of Walter Tevis's chess novel The Queen's Gambit, with Elliot Page proposed for the lead.
Ledger was born in Perth on 4 April 1979; his father raced cars and worked as a mining engineer, his mother taught French. At Guildford Grammar he played Peter Pan at ten, and his love of Gene Kelly led him to choreograph a 60-strong team to the school's first all-boy win at the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge. At 16 he sat early exams, left school and drove across the country to Sydney with his friend Trevor DiCarlo, then took small parts in shows including Home and Away.
He moved to the United States in 1998, and 10 Things I Hate About You gave him his breakthrough the following year. Brokeback Mountain (2005), in which he played the Wyoming ranch hand Ennis Del Mar, made him at 26 the eighth-youngest Best Actor nominee; Stephen Holden of The New York Times put the performance alongside the best of Marlon Brando. In Todd Haynes's I'm Not There he was one of six actors each embodying a facet of Bob Dylan.
Behind the camera he ran a production company, The Masses, directing music videos and co-founding a record label with Ben Harper. He made a clip for Nick Drake's song Black Eyed Dog, whose title borrows Winston Churchill's name for depression, and wanted to make a documentary about Drake. With the Scottish writer Allan Scott he was developing The Queen's Gambit, in which he also meant to act.
Ledger died on 22 January 2008 from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, months after finishing work as the Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. He described the character as a clown with zero empathy, and the role won him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, which his family collected. Roughly half of his scenes for Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus were done, so Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepped in as transformed versions of his character to complete it.
Source: Heath Ledger
