KEY POINTS:
Heath Ledger seemingly lived the dream of all young actors from this side of the world. Got a job, got noticed, got another, got out, got famous.
He also got good.
Though for a while, as he made the transition from former Aussie TV regular to teen pin-up to leading man, he went through some films that never really fired.
He helped Mel Gibson fight the American Revolution in The Patriot, which might have been seen as the torch being passed from one expatriate Aussie to the new boy.
And he showed a gift for comedy in the likes of Shakespeare-meets-high-school comedy in 10 Things I Hate About You and the medieval rock'n'roll romp A Knight's Tale.
Even his movies which made a hasty trip to DVD showed his range and versatility as an actor, whether he was playing the great Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, one of the brothers Grimm or legendary lover Casanova.
But it was Ledger's Oscar-nominated performance in Brokeback Mountain, as he buried himself deep into the repressed and phlegmatic character of Ennis Del Mar, that showed his depths as an actor.
It won him many a comparison to Marlon Brando, even if he lost the Academy Award to Phillip Seymour Hoffmans's showy turn as Truman Capote.
And with his next film due for release, the Batman revival of Dark Knight, Ledger was due some comparison with Jack Nicholson, who so memorably played villain the Joker in the caped crusader's previous big-screen incarnation.
But the early trailers suggest that Ledger's crazy clown might well out-psycho the last guy to wear that famous fixed grin. And that the film is Ledger's last stand is sure to cast a strange pall over what's meant to be just another superhero movie.
