Heath Ledger Archives

On January 22—the anniver­sary of Heath Ledger’s passing—Hollywood will unveil this year’s Academy Award nominees, and Heath is consid­ered a lock to secure a posthumous Best Supporting Actor nod for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

A year after Heath Ledger’s death, his closest friends finally open up to EW about his last days, life as a father to Matilda and fear of fame.

“I haven’t talked about it until now. I’m really nervous,” says actor Wes Bent­ley, one of Heath Ledger’s closest friends. They costarred in 2002’s The Four Feath­ers. “Heath’s fun clouded its way through a room,” says Wes. “It was infectious …Some people think he’d party too much and take drugs. That wasn’t the case. It was young energy. He was high off life.”

“Heath al­ways seemed so mature,” says 10 Things I Hate About You costar Julia Stiles. “I got the sense he was averse to becoming any kind of teen idol. I think he felt like 10 Things had more substance, but he anticipated that if he did more movies like this, he’d get stuck doing teen romantic comedies.”

To read the full cover feature on Heath, visit EW.com (be warned, it’s 28 pages long).

At the 2009 Golden Globes on Sunday Heath Ledger won for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his role as The Joker in The Dark Knight.

The film’s director, Christopher Nolan, accepted the statuette from presenter Demi Moore and said “All of us who worked with Heath accept this with an awful mixture of sadness and incredible pride. After Heath passed on, you saw a hole ripped in the future of cinema — but with the extraordinary response to his work that we’ve seen all over the world, I, for one, start to be able to look a bit less at that gap in the future and a little bit more at the incredible place in the history of cinema that he built for himself with his talent and with his dedication to his artistry. For any of us lucky enough to work with him or to have enjoyed his performance, he will be eternally missed, but he will never be forgotten.”

“We are overjoyed for him,” his father Kim Ledger told People. “It’s wonderful.”

The late Heath Ledger was just honored with a Golden Globe nomination for his work as The Joker in The Dark Knight.

Shortly after, his father, Kim Ledger, and immediate Ledger family issued the following announcement:

“We thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for honoring Heath’s performance in The Dark Knight. This nomination is deeply appreciated and is not lost on those of us who continue to love and miss him. We are so proud that our boy’s work is being recognized in this way.”

Matilda Ledger takes a spin around Brooklyn on her tricycle on Tuesday morning. Her mom, Michelle Williams, was MIA.

Michelle was recently interviewed by Parade:

Weren’t you ever afraid of being alone in Hollywood as a teenager? Hindsight. Isn’t it great? The risks of going into L.A. at such an early age are huge. At the time, I was invincible. I thought I was on top of the world. I didn’t realize what I was doing. But I wouldn’t trade any of those experiences for anything in the world. I am who I am because of them. I had a lot of growing up to do and it was slammed into a couple of short years. I did stupid, crazy things. But those stupid crazy things prepared me to deal with future.

What’s guiding you now? I think that, above all, it would be perseverance. I can’t really be objective, but the one thing that I’ve always had is an incredible amount of determination. And I guess it’s innate within everybody. It’s just a survival skill.

Michelle Williams holds hands with her skipping 2-year-old daughter Matilda Rose as they head back to their Brooklyn home after having coffee at a local cafe on Monday morning (December 2).

Matilda was seen munching on a little piece of pita bread as her 28-year-old actress mom sipped on her coffee.

Earlier this morning, the nominees for the Spirit Awards were announced. Michelle’s down-on-her-luck drama, Wendy and Lucy, was amongst the best-picture nominees. Congrats, Michelle!

15+ pictures inside of pita pretty Matilda Ledger… More Here! »

Michelle Williams and 2-year-old daughter Matilda Rose is all smiles as they head to the doctor’s office in New York City on Monday morning.

The 28-year-old actress stars in the upcoming Kelly Reichardt-directed film, Wendy & Lucy. It’s about this woman Wendy (Williams) whose life is derailed en route to a potentially lucrative summer job. When her car breaks down, and her dog Lucy is taken to the pound, the thin fabric of her financial situation comes apart, and she is led through a series of increasingly dire economic decisions.

Wendy and Lucy has garnered an impressive 89% on RottenTomatoes.com, so obviously Oscar buzz is being generated. Watch the trailer at FirstShowing.net. More Here! »

Michelle Williams takes daughter Matilda, who turns 3 on Tuesday, to pick up her morning coffee at a local diner in Brooklyn, New York City on Friday morning.

In her new book, “Heath, a Family’s Tale”, author Janet Fife-Yeomans reveals how Heath gave up a string of glamorous affairs when he met Michelle and had Matilda.

Heath supposedly said, “The level of synchronicity in my life now, with me and Michelle and now Matilda, (has) meant it’s become everything to me — the most important thing I do… My child smiles up at me in the morning and that’s it — I feel connected to life; this is what it’s all about… There’s something very cosmic about the experience of parenthood… Suddenly you get the right perspective and priorities. It’s marvelous — and the most remarkable experience I’ve ever had.”

Michelle Williams takes daughter Matilda Rose, who turns 3 later this month, for a walk around their Brooklyn neighborhood on Friday afternoon.

After the 28-year-old actress attended the premiere for Synecdoche, New York on Wednesday, she was seen holding hands with her new beau Spike Jonze.

Jonze, who produced Synecdoche, also kept caressing Michelle’s back affectionately throughout the evening.

“He couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her,” a source told People. “It was very cute.” More Here! »