by Aj Brady

Created on: July 29, 2008

Heath Andrew Ledger was born on April 4, 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, the son of French teacher Sally and Kim Ledger, a race car driver and mining engineer, whose family established and owned the well-known Ledger Engineering Foundry.

Heath attended Mary's Mount Primary School and later Guildford Grammar School, where he had his first acting experiences, starring in a school production as Peter Pan at age 10. His parents separated when he was 10 and divorced when he was 11. Ledger's older sister, Kate, an actress and later a publicist, with whom he was very close, inspired his acting on stage, and his love of Gene Kelly inspired his successful choreography leading to Guildford Grammar's 60-member team's "first all-boy victory" at the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge (an annual Australian music and dance spectacular for high schools). Heath's and Kate's other siblings include two half-sisters, Ashleigh Bell (b. 1989), his mother's daughter with her second husband and his stepfather Roger Bell, and Olivia Ledger (b. 1997), his father's daughter with second wife and his stepmother Emma Brown.

Heath was an avid chess player, winning Western Australia's junior chess championship at the age of 10. As an adult, he often played with other chess enthusiasts at Washington Square Park.

Whilst academically, Ledger was quite adept, he did not enjoy the routine and staidness of high school, choosing to leave at age 16, driving across the Nullarbor desert in a car with best friend Trevor DiCarlo to the bright lights of Sydney, hoping to become an actor.

Whilst he got a few small bit parts here and there early on, mixing this with work as a waiter, his first major role was in a Perth TV production called "Sweat", revolving around a sports institute training a group of Olympic-level athletes. In this series, Ledger portrayed a gay cyclist.

His next major production was in a Fox Broadcast Company cable production called "Roar", filmed in the Australian state of Queensland. Whilst this program was short-lived, it opened Ledger to movie heavyweights in the United States.

Ledger made his cinematic debut in the 1997 Australian movie titled "Blackrock". Around the same time, he also had a short-term role on long-running Australian soap "Home And Away", playing a high school bully who targeted popular long-time figure Sally Fletcher, after she rejected him following a drunken one-night stand.

Ledger next came to prominence in 1999, when he made his Hollywood film debut in the teen flick "10

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