Portrait of Heath Ledger wins Australian art award

SYDNEY, Australia - A portrait of Hollywood star Heath Ledger painted weeks before his death has won an Australian art award.

The painting features a bare-chested Ledger staring from the canvas as two images of the actor whisper into his ears.

On Thursday, it was awarded a secondary prize by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in its annual national portrait competition. Sydney artist Del Kathryn Barton won first prize with her self-portrait.

"Heath" by Vincent Fantauzzo was the popular choice among the 32,000 who saw the exhibition.

Ledger died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in January. He was 28.

Heath Ledger

Heath Andrew Ledger was born on April 4th 1979 in Perth, Western Australia. With dreams of becoming an actor, Heath packed his bags and headed to Sydney.

His early screen roles didn't amount to much although he did make a brief appearance in Aussie soap Home and Away where he played a surfer who falls in love with one of the girls of Summer Bay.

Heath's big break finally came when he was cast in the crime thriller, Two Hands (1999). His impressive performance helped the Australian film receive a US and UK release. It also helped Heath secure a role in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You (1999).

In the years that followed, Heath established himself as one of Hollywood's hottest young actors with the movies The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2001) and The Four Feathers (2002).

In 2005 Heath gave his best performance to date as Ennis Del Mar in the wonderful movie Brokeback Mountain. Heath was nominated for Best Actor at the 2006 Academy Awards, eventually losing out to Philip Seymour Hoffman for the film Capote.

On January 22, 2008, Ledger was found dead in his fourth-floor apartment at 421 Broome Street in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City. He was just 28 years old.