Heath Ledger

Born: April 4 1979
Where: Perth, Western Australia

Died: January 22 2008 New York

The tragic star is best known for his Oscar-nominated role as repressed gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain.

Other notable appearances included the son of a southern bigot in Monster's Ball and the villainously unhinged Joker in the Batman sequel The Dark Knight.

Of Irish and Scottish ancestry, Ledger and his sister were named after the lead characters in Emile Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

A keen hockey player at school, he also took drama lessons and even co-ordinated a team to take part in a nationwide high-school dance competition.

The actor got his start in the Globe Shakespeare Company in Perth and left high school at 16 to drive 2,600 miles to Sydney to hustle for work in the movie business.

His debut came in a 1997 Australian teen drama, Blackrock, which led him to a breakthrough part as one of the first Australian television gay roles in Sweat, a show about young Olympic hopefuls.

He then went on to star in Fox's medieval TV drama Roar which lead him to seek out an agent in the States and was immediately given a role on the low budget black comedy, Two Hands.

The 1999 romantic comedy Ten Things I Hate About You - opposite Julia Stiles - was his real breakthrough and he subsequently won the coveted role of Mel Gibson's son in The Patriot.

His profile was raised as a medieval knight in the jolly romp, A Knight's Tale, opposite Rufus Sewell, and the Oscar-winning Monster's Ball with Halle Berry.

In 2002, he made the swashbuckling remake of The Four Feathers, co starring American Beauty's Wes Bentley, and the medieval whodunnit The Sin Eater.

Offscreen, he also began dating fellow actress and King Kong star Naomi Watts (the pair would split up two years later).

He played Australian outlaw Ned Kelly in the film of the same name and, in 2005, played mentor to the skateboarding Z-Boys in Lords of Dogtown.

The same year he starred alongside Matt Damon in Terry Gilliam's Brothers Grimm and played a gay cowboy opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain.

(he met and dated actress Michelle Williams on the Brokeback set and she gave birth to their daughter Matilda Rose Ledger in October 2005. The couple split up in 2007).

He also portrayed the fabled romantic Casanova opposite Sienna Miller in Lasse Hallstrom's film of the same name and played a poet who falls in love with Abbie Cornish's art student in Candy.

Ledger also essayed one of six versions of Bob Dylan (others included Cate Blanchett and Dark Knight co-star Christian Bale) in director Todd Haynes I'm Not There.

However, in a trend that was to be consistent throughout his career, Ledger voiced extreme doubts about his performance despite favourable reviews.

He had finished filming the role of Batman's arch nemesis The Joker in director Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight when he was found dead aged 28 in his Manhattan apartment.

New York police said they did not suspect foul play and that his body had been discovered with prescription pills nearby.