Born on April 4, 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, Heath (like his sister Kate) got his name from the protagonist in Emily Bronte's classic novel, Wuthering Heights.
Unlike the brooding Heathcliff, however, Ledger began his career largely as yet another piece of Australian eye-candy. He was noticed in the Aussie crime thriller Two Hands (1999), and he broke into mainstream Hollywood with the teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) with Julia Stiles (right).
The performance led to Heath's being typecast as a teen hunk.
Striving to break away from that image, he pushed towards serious -- albeit smaller -- roles in films like The Patriot (2000), Roland Emmerich's war drama featuring Mel Gibson in the lead.
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