Heath Ledger

HEATH LEDGER "Brokeback Mountain" * THE first scene Heath Ledger shot was the hardest -- and it's one of the most wrenching in "Brokeback Mountain." Over dishes after a depressing Thanksgiving, his ex-wife, played by his real-life girlfriend, Michelle Williams, confronts him with the knowledge that she knows about his affair with his friend Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

Joining the ranks of teenage homeowners is "Hunger Games" star Josh Hutcherson, who has bought a place in the Hollywood Hills West area for $2.5 million. Called the Tree House, the 2,000-square-foot-plus house has been home at different times to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and the late actor Heath Ledger. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom house, built in 1951, sits behind gates on nearly a half-acre filled with sycamores. Features include glass walls, polished concrete floors, an office, beamed ceilings and video security.

Joining the ranks of teenage homeowners is "Hunger Games" star Josh Hutcherson, who has bought a place in the Hollywood Hills West area for $2.5 million. Called the Tree House, the 2,000-square-foot-plus house has been home at different times to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and the late actor Heath Ledger. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom house, built in 1951, sits behind gates on nearly a half-acre filled with sycamores. Features include glass walls, polished concrete floors, an office, beamed ceilings and video security.

It doesn't take much scratching beneath the surface to find a celebrity name in a home's title history or the public record in L.A. County. Among recent listings with celebrity pedigrees are: -- An Italian-style villa in La Canada Flintridge built in 1989 by actor Kevin Costner with his then-wife, Cindy. The walled compound has 6,754 square feet of living space in the main house, 2,400 square feet of loggias and a detached 840-square-foot structure with a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, tasting room, office and bathroom.

Over a wildly eclectic 15-year movie career, Heath Ledger rose from relative obscurity in Australia to become one of the finest actors of his generation. Disappearing into many of his roles -- he could do glamorous, menacing and abject with equal ease and could flawlessly pull off American and British accents -- the actor never appeared content to rest on his professional laurels. "I don't really like to do one thing twice," Ledger told The Times in 2005.

It doesn't take much scratching beneath the surface to find a celebrity name in a home's title history or the public record in L.A. County. Among recent listings with celebrity pedigrees are: -- An Italian-style villa in La Canada Flintridge built in 1989 by actor Kevin Costner with his then-wife, Cindy. The walled compound has 6,754 square feet of living space in the main house, 2,400 square feet of loggias and a detached 840-square-foot structure with a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, tasting room, office and bathroom.

Christopher Plummer has barely taken a breather since the publication in 2008 of his autobiography, "In Spite of Myself." The charming 80-year-old Canadian-born actor was in four movies last year -- three of which have received Oscar attention: He has the title role in Terry Gilliam's surreal fantasy "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" (which earned art direction and costume design nominations); he was the voice of Charles Muntz, the maniacal explorer with a pack load of talking dogs in Disney-Pixar's "Up," nominated for best picture and animated feature; and he played the octogenarian Russian author Leo Tolstoy in "The Last Station," for which the academy bestowed a supporting actor nomination.

The music video Heath Ledger directed for "King Rat" by Modest Mouse debuted online Tuesday. The six-minute animated video is both whimsical and dark, showing whales and dolphins aboard a ship, fishing for humans in the water. It concludes with a message in white letters on a black screen: "This began with our friend, a great defender of life, and was completed in his spirit." Ledger was 28 when he died last year. Modest Mouse announced in March that it would release the video "in honor of Heath's last piece of work as a director," according to spokeswoman Lisa Markowitz.

There are always a lot of emotions on Oscar nomination day, but there was an especially bittersweet surge on Thursday when the late Heath Ledger's name was called out in the category of supporting actor for his portrayal of the maniacal Joker in "The Dark Knight" -- one year to the day after his death. Even as the team behind the Warner Bros. film embraced the posthumous honor for Ledger, it also dealt with the disappointment that the acclaimed blockbuster was left out of the best picture race.

Great actors, even those who have been blessed with longevity, often bear a tragic mark. It's not just the ups and downs of stardom that can make for a cruel career. Rough inner seas are typically the very reason someone seeks to be among what William Hazlitt, that lyrical witness of the early 19th century British stage, called "the motley representatives of human nature." Heath Ledger's short legacy as a screen actor offers us enough evidence of the rarity of his talent.

Christopher Plummer has barely taken a breather since the publication in 2008 of his autobiography, "In Spite of Myself." The charming 80-year-old Canadian-born actor was in four movies last year -- three of which have received Oscar attention: He has the title role in Terry Gilliam's surreal fantasy "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" (which earned art direction and costume design nominations); he was the voice of Charles Muntz, the maniacal explorer with a pack load of talking dogs in Disney-Pixar's "Up," nominated for best picture and animated feature; and he played the octogenarian Russian author Leo Tolstoy in "The Last Station," for which the academy bestowed a supporting actor nomination.

Though "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" will probably always be known primarily as the last film for actor Heath Ledger, it may someday also be recognized as the first real film role for Lily Cole. The 21-year-old British-born Cole already has been one of the world's top models since being discovered at the age of 14. With her distinctive wide-set eyes, tiny button mouth, porcelain-pale skin and bright red hair, there is something ethereal, almost alien about her, an in-built strangeness that director Terry Gilliam set to full use in "Parnassus," which opened in Los Angeles on Christmas Day and will expand to theaters nationwide on Jan. 8. "That's why I cast her," said Gilliam.

"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" is as unusual and idiosyncratic as its one-of-a-kind title. You'd expect no less from Terry Gilliam, and admirers of this singular filmmaker will be pleased to know that "Imaginarium" is one of his most original and accessible works. A member of the Monty Python troupe, Gilliam is nothing if not audacious; witness earlier films such as "Brazil," "Time Bandits" and "Twelve Monkeys." Here he applies his fantastic and fantastical imagination to a visually dazzling tale of combat for men's souls.

You can't call actor Logan Lerman spineless. "My whole family is in orthotics and prosthetics," he says, "so I grew up having to check for scoliosis every week. 'Come over. Let me feel your spine.' " The 17-year-old costar of "My One and Only" (with Renée Zellweger and Kevin Bacon) is also putting some backbone into his acting, despite his youth. "From a really young age, like 5 or whatever, I really wanted to do this because I really wanted to get out of school," he says with a laugh, calling from a beach at Lake Tahoe, where he's vacationing with his family.

A basic plaid button-down intertwined over a simple blue denim shirt evoked more emotion from the reticent Ennis Del Mar than any words Heath Ledger could've spoken in "Brokeback Mountain." Ennis discovered the two lonely shirts hanging in a closet after the death of his lover Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Symbolic of their lifelong forbidden relationship is that Jack's denim was draped over Ennis' plaid as if to protect him.

The music video Heath Ledger directed for "King Rat" by Modest Mouse debuted online Tuesday. The six-minute animated video is both whimsical and dark, showing whales and dolphins aboard a ship, fishing for humans in the water. It concludes with a message in white letters on a black screen: "This began with our friend, a great defender of life, and was completed in his spirit." Ledger was 28 when he died last year. Modest Mouse announced in March that it would release the video "in honor of Heath's last piece of work as a director," according to spokeswoman Lisa Markowitz.

"The Dark Knight" is one of the most anticipated movies of 2008, and for months Batman fans have been debating the film's biggest wild card: the choice of Heath Ledger as the Joker, a role that comes with the considerable challenge of filling the clown shoes so memorably worn by Jack Nicholson back in 1989.

HEATH LEDGER is driving me home. Movie stars don't usually deign to drive journalists anywhere, especially long distances that require time, effort and knowledge of the arcane, helter-skelter rules of the New York streets. But this Brooklyn transplant of just five months powers his car -- a hulking blue BMW -- with the leisurely assurance of a cowboy on the range.

Judging by Thursday's 25-minute preview unveiled at Comic-Con, James Cameron's 3-D "Avatar" will be every bit the spectacle of his 1997 Oscar-winning film "Titanic." The animated "Avatar" is set on a distant, lush planet called Pandora, a super-saturated world filled with 1,000-foot trees, exotic, near fluorescent forests, fearsome predators and an indigenous people known as the Na'vi -- tall, blue humanoids who are peaceful until provoked.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is billing his new movie, "(500) Days of Summer," as "an anti- romance," a cinematic riposte to the "silly and dismissible" romantic comedies that Hollywood has been making and marketing to lonely hearts for decades. The whimsical and bittersweet tale about a regular guy hopelessly smitten with a girl who doesn't quite share the sentiment unfolds in a nonsequential narrative style that jumps forward and backward over the 500 days of their doomed relationship.