10 Best Heath Ledger Performances Ranked (And the Joker Isn’t #1)

10. Candy (2006)

• Role: Dan
• Director: Neil Armfield
• Writers: Neil Armfield, Luke Davies
• Cast: Abbie Cornish, Geoffrey Rush

Don't do heroin. It is bad. This is Ledger’s most harrowing work. He plays a poet spiraling into addiction, and it is unpleasant. Ledger captures the euphoria and the subsequent agony of dependency in a raw and unapologetic fashion.

9. Lords of Dogtown (2005)

• Role: Skip Engblom
• Director: Catherine Hardwicke
• Writer: Stacy Peralta
• Cast: Emile Hirsch, Victor Rasuk, John Robinson, Michael Angarano

The doc about this story is an all-timer. So when it came time to adapt it, you needed characters that could jump off the screen. And Ledger was one of the right picks. He played the cynical, beer-swilling mentor to the Z-Boys. This was a pivotal moment where he leaned into "character acting" and proved he was happy to disappear into a role that wasn't glamorous. He was having fun.

8. Monster’s Ball (2001)

• Role: Sonny Grotowski
• Director: Marc Forster
• Writers: Milo Addica, Will Rokos
• Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Peter Boyle

He's only in the movie for the beginning, and yet I felt like this was the performance that put the entire world on notice. He can act, and he's able to carry some of the most complex emotions imaginable. Ledger plays a corrections officer, crumbling under the weight of his father’s bigotry. It is a quiet, fragile turn that anchors the emotional stakes of the film’s first act.

7. A Knight’s Tale (2001)

• Role: William Thatcher
• Director: Brian Helgeland
• Writer: Brian Helgeland
• Cast: Paul Bettany, Rufus Sewell, Shannyn Sossamon, Alan Tudyk

This is the movie that turned Ledger into a global superstar. Kids in my high school were going every weekend to see it. I joined in. His 2001 was pretty legendary. And we named this one of our favorite Knight movies, too. He plays the peasant who "changes his stars." Ledger anchors a weird, wonderful, anachronistic movie with sheer "it factor."

6. Two Hands (1999)

• Role: Jimmy
• Director: Gregor Jordan
• Writer: Gregor Jordan
• Cast: Bryan Brown, Rose Byrne, David Field

Before Hollywood, Ledger starred in this Australian crime-comedy that I think is really underrated. He plays a young man in over his head with the mob, and displays a nervous, frantic energy that is incredibly endearing.

5. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

• Role: Patrick Verona
• Director: Gil Junger
• Writers: Karen McCullah Lutz, Kirsten Smith
• Cast: Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, David Krumholtz

Ledger burst onto the Hollywood scene by making a "bad boy" trope feel human and heartwarming. The movie is a Shakespeare riff on The Taming of the Shrew. Ledger’s natural charisma and that iconic stadium singing sequence proved he was more than just a pretty face. He had the chops.

4. I’m Not There (2007)

• Role: Robbie Clark
• Director: Todd Haynes
• Writers: Todd Haynes, Oren Moverman
• Cast: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Michelle Williams

This was a perfect Bob Dylan biopic; experimental and weird, just like him. Ledger represents the "fame" era. He captures the restlessness and domestic friction of a man whose public persona is swallowing his private life, delivering some of the film's most grounded, emotional scenes.

3. The Dark Knight (2008)

• Role: The Joker
• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan
• Cast: Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman

The Joker is like an Inside the Actor's Studio class in physical acting. There's the lip-licking, the hunched gait, and the vocal fluctuations, just a ton of things he does to become someone else totally. Ledger created an agent of chaos that changed cinema forever. It’s an iconic, transformative performance that rightfully earned him an Oscar.

2. Ned Kelly (2003)

• Role: Ned Kelly
• Director: Gregor Jordan
• Writer: John Michael McDonagh
• Cast: Orlando Bloom, Naomi Watts, Geoffrey Rush

You may think it's nuts to place this movie here, but I bet you have never seen it. Ledger delivered a performance of immense gravity, and I think this is his best work as an outlaw. He portrays Kelly not just as a folk hero, but as a man fueled by a desperate sense of justice. It's mature and wise.

1. Brokeback Mountain (2005)

• Role: Ennis Del Mar
• Director: Ang Lee
• Writers: Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana
• Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway

Ledger plays Ennis as a man literally trapped inside his own body with no escape. He speaks through clenched teeth, his shoulders are permanently hunched, and his eyes reflect a lifetime of repressed grief. It's a performance of profound subtlety and remains his definitive masterpiece.

Summing It All Up 

Heath Ledger was taken from us too soon. His work in these movies has stood the test of time, and we'll always have the movies to go back to in order to understand what a massive talent he was and to revisit his genius time and time again.

Did I leave off any of your favorite performances?