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The Academy Awards honored the late Heath Ledger and his family for the 33 minutes of screentime he had in The Dark Knight playing The Joker. Ledger might not have been around to accept the prize. However, he gave a quick glimpse into what his Oscar speech would’ve been like years before winning the award.

Heath Ledger wouldn’t have given a fancy Oscars speech

At the time of Ledger’s death, he not only amassed a massive net worth, but he won an Oscar, too. And The Dark Knight wasn’t Ledger’s first recognition from the Academy. He was also nominated for his performance in 2005’s Brokeback Mountain. Ledger was honored and flattered by the idea of even receiving a nomination back in those days. But he didn’t marinate too much on the possibility. In a resurfaced interview with Black Film, Ledger seemed to have mixed feelings about the Oscars in general.

“The only time it’s presented to me; the idea of a thought is like today,” Ledger said. “Michelle and I definitely don’t really sit around worried about it. It’s also a little surreal; kind of a strange concept to me that one performance or one movie can be compared or competed against another, and that’s what this strange little season does. Each performance and each movie is running a different race. It’s a different sport. We all train for different sports, and we all start from different points. There is no one finish line at the end. It’s an award season of opinions, so it’s full of false sense of success and failure.”

So when it came to winning an Oscar, Ledger confided that he wouldn’t have had any grand speeches planned for the occasion.

“I’m not going to pretend to be some great wise person. I’m just a kid from Perth who’s acting. I’ll probably thank my mom,” he said.

What happened to Heath Ledger’s Oscar?

Ledger was the second actor in history to win an Oscar posthumously after his death, second only to Peter Finch. His father, mother, and sister received the award on his behalf. Ledger’s dad, Kim, reflected on the experience in a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“Bittersweet is probably the best way I can describe that night,” Kim said. “It was only a year and a month since his passing. We hadn’t got our heads around the tragedy of losing him, but at the same time, he was receiving such accolades for what he knew was his best work.”

It was noted that Ledger’s Best Supporting Actor statue lived in the Western Australian Museum in Ledger’s hometown of Perth. There, the award is part of a special section in the museum that honors Ledger’s work in The Dark Knight and other movies. The gallery also features Ledger’s outfits from The Dark Knight and Brokeback Mountain, the actor’s journal entries, and photographs.

“It was peer recognition that was important to Heath and the Oscar was the epitome of that,” Kim said about his son’s legacy.

The plan was to eventually pass Ledger’s Oscar down to his daughter Matilda, whom he shares with actor Michelle Williams.

 “Michelle is aware the Oscar remains secured with the museum. At the end of the day, everything is there for Matilda, and when she can take possession of it, it’s all hers,” Kim said.

Why Heath Ledger refused to present at the 2007 Oscars

Ledger’s Brokeback Mountain co-star, Jake Gyllenhaal, gave a glimpse into how seriously his partner took his craft. According to Gyllenhaal, the two were asked to present at the ceremony in a sketch that would’ve poked fun at the 2005 feature. Gyllenhaal didn’t mind the humor. Ledger, however, had a completely different attitude.

“I was sort of at the time, ‘Oh, okay… whatever’. I’m always like, ‘It’s all in good fun’. And Heath said, ‘It’s not a joke to me — I don’t want to make any jokes about it,’” Gyllenhaal recalled in an interview with Another Man (via Yahoo).

 “That’s the thing I loved about Heath. He would never joke. Someone wanted to make a joke about the story or whatever, he was like, ‘No. This is about love. Like, that’s it, man. Like, no,’” he added.

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