Do we like Heath Ledger?
Our score: 9 out of 10. He backed Brokeback Mountain's message and refused to let it be turned into a punchline, and the record is clean.
Heath Ledger was born in Perth in 1979, started acting as a kid with a stage role in Peter Pan at ten, and moved from children's TV to Aussie series Sweat and then the US show Roar. From there it was Los Angeles and a run of films including 10 Things I Hate About You, The Patriot and A Knight's Tale.
The big turn came with Brokeback Mountain, where he played a gay ranch hand and earned an Oscar nomination. Then came the Joker in The Dark Knight, which won him a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar. He died in January 2008 at 28, only the second actor to win an Academy Award after death.
The harm check is where he shines. When Brokeback came out he said he didn't mind being part of the conversation about how gay relationships are seen, and hoped the film would help. He also reportedly refused to join an Oscars bit that joked about the film, according to Jake Gyllenhaal, who said Ledger didn't see it as a joke.
On other topics, honestly, the record is thin. He declined to share his political views in a 2006 profile, though The Big Issue noted he'd been spotted at anti-war rallies. Nothing turned up from him on climate, migrants or vaccines, and his career ended before the culture-war years, so there's no dodgy company to check.
On the good-person side, his sister Kate said he had around 30 house keys and handed them to friends or strangers who needed a place to stay in LA. His father said he loved helping his friends. Kate has also described him as a beautiful soul, which is exactly what a sister would say, but it matches the rest.
His name lives on in the Heath Ledger Scholarship, run by Australians in Film, which gives a young Australian actor a leg-up each year. Nothing new on him lately beyond anniversary tributes, and no allegations of misconduct against him turned up in the reporting. We looked, and that's the lot.