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Nominations for the 81st Academy Awards were announced on January 22, 2009 by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis and Oscar winner Forest Whitaker.

Ganis and Whitaker, who won an Academy Award® for his lead performance in “The Last King of Scotland” (2006), announced the nominees in 10 of the 24 categories at a live news conference attended by more than 400 international media representatives.

Academy members from each of the branches vote to determine the nominees in their respective categories – actors nominate actors, film editors nominate film editors, etc. In the Animated Feature Film and Foreign Language Film categories, nominations are selected by vote of multi-branch screening committees. All voting members are eligible to select the Best Picture nominees.

On the first anniversary of his death, Heath Ledger received an Oscar nomination.

The Dark Knight star is up for Best Supporting Actor, alongside Josh Brolin (Milk), Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder); Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt) and Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road).

“It’s fantastic,” costar Aaron Eckhart told Usmagazine.com after his win. It’s wonderful. I couldn’t be happier!”

On Jan. 22, 2008, the actor died of a prescription drug overdose at his NYC apartment at the age of 28.

“For any of us lucky enough to have worked with him or to have enjoyed his performance, he will be eternally missed,” Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan said as he accepted Ledger’s Golden Globe award, “but he will never be forgotten.”

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Will Ledger Win Best Supporting Actor Or Will This Be The Year For Kate Winslet Or Mickey Rourke?

(CBS) With Oscar nominations being announced Thursday, many wonder if Heath Ledger will win best supporting actor or if this will be the year for Kate Winslet or Mickey Rourke.

Tom O’Neil, a writer for the Los Angeles Times and its awards’ Web site, The Envelope, shared his predictions with Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen.

“What is the mood going into this Oscar season?” Chen asked.

“Finally, we have an upbeat exciting year! You remember the last Oscars. Come on, there was a writer’s strike, the movies were all bleak, like ‘There Will Be Blood,’ and ‘No Country for Old Men.’ There were no stars. This year we’ve got all these A-list stars. We’ve got Kate and Leo and Clint. Both halves of Brangelina and exciting movies like ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ O’Neil said.

“The Dark Knight” is a strong contender, but will the summer blockbuster be nominated for best picture?

“Yes. I think we know four of the five best picture nominees, I think we know, ‘Slum Dog Millionaire,’ ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ ‘Frost/Nixon’ and ‘Milk.’ The question is that fifth slot. ‘Can Batman do what no superhero movie has ever done, which is get a nomination for best picture?’ It made the second most money in film history. It deserves it. But they are such snobs at the Oscars, will they let it in?” he said.

According to O’Neil, there could be other contenders if “The Dark Knight” doesn’t get that fifth nomination slot, such as “Gran Torino” with Clint Eastwood and “The Reader” with Kate Winslet.

O’Neil said “WALL-E” has an outside shot for a nomination. “Only one animated film has ever been nominated for best picture, and that was ‘Beauty and the Beast.’”

With Ledger’s stellar performance playing the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” his chances of getting best supporting actor are good, but there is no guarantee.

“He is a lock to get nominated. But don’t assume simply because he’s so prominent and because and there’s the sentiment behind him that he’s going win. At the Oscars, only one person ever won from the grave and that was Peter Finch for ‘Network’ and he died a month after his nomination. Heath Ledger has been gone a year and you can look at equivalent stars like James Dean who died young and tragic, this great heroic star. He lost twice posthumously. So did Spencer Tracy. I think he will win, but sometimes in Hollywood, it’s out of sight, out of mind,” O’Neil admitted.

One thing that viewers can count on is surprises tomorrow.

“You always have surprises at the Oscars. We could see some weird things like ‘WALL-E’ getting in for best picture. We could see Debra Winger get nominated in the supporting slot for ‘Rachel Getting Married.’ She only really has one scene in the movie, but it could happen,” he said.

It may be two-time Golden Globe Award-winning Kate Winslet’s year.

“I sure hope so, the poor dear is only 33 years old and she has lost five times if she loses again, she will tie the record held by Thelma Ritter and Deborah Kerr as the biggest losing actress in history. She’s got two strong roles here. The question is ‘which one or both will she be nominated for?’ That’s the problem because they are both lead roles and she is trying to claim that the role in ‘The Reader’ is supporting, but Oscar nominees can put you wherever they want,” O’Neil admitted.

With Mickey Rourke reviving his career after many tumultuous years with a Golden Globe win for best performance by an actor in a motion picture – drama, many are wondering if this will be his year as well.

“I think it is,” O’Neil said. “Sean Penn had the early momentum, but watch out for Mickey!”

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The music of Nick Drake will be reinterpreted by Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, Jack Johnson and Norah Jones for an upcoming tribute album. The still-untitled record will also feature Heath Ledger’s video for Drake’s “Black-Eyed Dog,” which was filmed in late 2007 in the months before the actor’s death. The clip was included in a multimedia installation but never officially released, although some footage surfaced online in February 2008. “I was obsessed with his story and his music and I pursued it for a while and still have hopes to kind of tell his story one day,” Ledger once said of Nick Drake, a British singer-songwriter who, like Ledger, died prematurely.

Drake released three albums before overdosing in 1974 at the age of 28. All three LPs — Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter and Pink Moon — placed on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The tribute disc will be released via Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records, and will include a DVD highlighting the album’s recording process.

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Gary Oldman calls late actor ‘breathtaking’; Mel Gibson, Julia Stiles also weigh in.

Just days before the one-year anniversary of Heath Ledger’s death, colleagues of the actor — who won a posthumous Golden Globe on Sunday — remember him in an article published on Entertainment Weekly’s Web site Friday (January 16). Since the news broke that Ledger had suddenly died of an accidental overdose in his SoHo loft in New York City last January 22, relatively few friends and colleagues of the actor have spoken about it. Now, in the wake of the anniversary, they are sharing with Entertainment Weekly some of their fondest memories of the actor.

While he’s more commonly lauded for his appearances in films like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Dark Knight,” for a generation of girls he will always be the rebellious teen heartthrob Patrick Verona from “10 Things I Hate About You.”

“Heath always seemed so mature,” co-star Julia Stiles said. “I got the sense he was averse to becoming any kind of teen idol. I think he felt like ’10 Things’ had more substance, but he anticipated that if he did more movies like this, he’d get stuck doing teen romantic comedies.”

Soon, he would star in an array of films, from epic period pieces like “The Patriot” or more intense fare like “Monster’s Ball.” And he wanted to prove that despite his youth, he could call the shots on his career.

“He wanted to try something different, something where the movie wasn’t resting on his shoulders,” “Monster’s Ball” director Marc Forster said. “The one thing he said was, ‘I’m not going to participate in the promotion of the movie. I’m just going to come in and focus on the acting.’ ”

“[Ledger] was his own man,” Mel Gibson recalled. “He was going to do what he was going to do. He was looking for a way to fulfill himself in his art and in who he was. He didn’t have the cart before the horse.”

Terry Gilliam, who worked with Ledger on two occasions, including the last film the actor worked on, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” remembered a different side of Ledger.

“He was obsessed with his daughter [Matilda],” he said. “She became the center of his thoughts. He would drag her up to my house in London. Here’s Heath, Academy Award nominee, and he’d just grab his daughter, stick her in a backpack, hop on the [subway] and come up to the house. Nobody would have thought, ‘There’s Heath Ledger!’ He was just a guy with a kid.”

Meanwhile, “Dark Knight” co-star Gary Oldman said he had initial concerns about working with Ledger on the film.

“I kind of raised my eyebrow at the casting,” he said. “But any concerns that one may have had vanished when you got on the set with him. I did a couple of scenes with Heath in the first leg of the shoot in London. I called a friend and he said, ‘How’s Heath?’ I said, ‘He’s breathtaking. He’s going to be astounding.’ I could tell just working for five minutes with him.

“If Heath does get an Oscar nomination,” he added, “I can just picture him up there, looking down and going, ‘F—!’ ”

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Heath Ledger’s mother says her son’s Golden Globe award and other accolades will end up in the hands of the person who mattered most in his life: his daughter Matilda.

“I should imagine that eventually it will be going to Matilda,” Sally Bell says from her home in Perth, Australia, in an exclusive interview. “At this stage she is only so young, but down the track she will have all these things. It will belong to her because she is part of him.”

Bell says she and her family are “bursting with pride” over her son’s recognition for playing the psychotic Joker in The Dark Knight, a role he “loved.”

“It is such a fantastic and wonderful legacy for his daughter. Matilda will have so many people who will be able to speak to her about her father’s abilities and [the] respect he had in the industry. That is such a wonderful legacy to leave,” she says.

Bell says she learned of his Golden Globe win before boarding a flight in Australia, adding there were “a few tears.”

“There is a lot of emotion tied up in this and we have to deal with that emotion first before we can relax and enjoy the moment, if you know what I mean,” she explains.

Bell says it has been “a bit of an emotional rollercoaster” for the family, but notes Heath would have appreciated the acknowledgment from his peers. “That’s what meant the most to him really,” she says.

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Although Heath Ledger’s family couldn’t be at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, they were there in spirit as the actor was honored posthumously for his wicked portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight.

“We are overjoyed for him,” his father Kim Ledger told PEOPLE of his son’s win for best supporting actor in a drama. Ledger, of Perth, Western Australia, cited personal reasons for not making it to the ceremony held at the Beverly Hills Hilton.

Ledger added: “It’s wonderful” that Heath was honored for his role in the action flick.

Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan accepted the award for Ledger. “On behalf of all of us who worked with Heath on Dark Knight, I accept this with mix of sadness and incredible pride,” said Nolan. ” He will be eternally missed but he will never be forgotten.”

Costar Aaron Eckhart says Heath’s recognition is “bittersweet.” “Just that we’re talking about him, remembering him, we’re showcasing his talent and him as a human being, is very important to me. For us – everyone in The Dark Knight – this is all for Heath,” Eckhart told PEOPLE at the ceremony.

“I get the chills every so often talking about him,” added Echart. “I knew Heath as an actor. I felt his spirit and I admired him.”

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Demi Moore presented the award for Best Supporting Actor, which was awarded to Heath for his role as the Joker in The Dark Night at the 66th annual Golden Globes awards. Director Christopher Nolan accepted the award on Heath’s behalf with a heart felt acceptance speech.

Heath created a masterpiece performance,  and his role as the joker will be remembered as iconic.  There is no question – Heath IS the definitive Joker.

Congratulations to Heath and his entire family.

“The 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards” will air live on NBC Sunday, January 11 (8 – 11 p.m. EST) at The Beverly Hilton.

Heath is nominated in “Best Performance by an Actor In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture”

Tom Cruise – Tropic Thunder
Robert Downey Jr. – Tropic Thunder
Ralph Fiennes – The Duchess
Philip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt
Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight

“He genuinely embodies chaos as one of pop culture’s most menacing villains.”  VH1

The 14th annual  Critic’s Choice Awards took place on Jan 8th, at the Santa Moncia Civic Auditorium while airing on VH1.   Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the Joker in ‘The Dark Knight’.  Director, Christopher Nolan accepted the award on Heath’s behalf.

The Critics’ Choice Awards have a history of being the predictor of  the Academy Award winners – let’s hope the track record holds true for Heath.

Click on the below image to view the photos of  Christopher Nolan on stage at the 14th annual Critic’s Choice awards last night (Jan 8).

‘The Dark Night’ was nominated in several categories at tonight’s (Jan 7) 35th annual People’s Choice Awards. Predictably, The Dark Night was clearly the people’s choice. The cast walked away with trophies in the following categories: Favorite Movie; Favorite Action Movie; Favorite Cast; Christian Bale for Favorite Superhero; and the most touching award of the night went to Christian Bale and Heath Ledger for Favorite On Screen Match up.

In memory of Heath and his integral role in the success of  The Dark Night, we will post some photos in the gallery of the awards show.