By Jill Serjeant
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Australia's Heath Ledger, who died last year, won the best supporting actor Oscar on Sunday for his maniacal performance as The Joker in Batman movie "The Dark Knight," the hot favourite for the award.
Ledger, who died at age 28 of an accidental prescription drug overdose, was only the second actor to receive a posthumous Oscar. Peter Finch won as best actor for his role as a TV anchorman in the 1976 film "Network" two months after dying from a heart attack.
Ledger's Oscar was also a rare exception to the rule that Academy Award voters overlook action hero movies, and those who perform in them, for the industry's highest honours but he had become an emotional favourite internationally.
"This award tonight ... validated Heath's quiet determination to be truly accepted by you all here, his peers, in an industry that he so loved," Ledger's father, Kim, said, accepting the Oscar on his son's behalf with Ledger's mother, Sally Bell, and the actor's sister, Kate Ledger.
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"We have been truly overwhelmed by the honour and respect bestowed on him with this award," said Sally Bell.
The publicity-shy Australian actor, who has a 3-year-old daughter Matilda, was found dead in his New York apartment five months before the July 2008 release of "The Dark Knight."
His compelling performance, together with worldwide interest after his death, helped power the Batman sequel to a global box-office gross of more than $1 billion.
Ledger was nominated for an Oscar for his 2005 role as a gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain" but did not win the prize.
This time, Ledger picked up virtually every award for playing The Joker -- a Golden Globe, British BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild and a slew of U.S. and Australian critics awards.
TRIBUTES IN AUSTRALIA
In Australia, tributes for Ledger began flowing after news of his win which some hoped would bring an end to the focus on the deceased actor.
"A deserving winner and a wonderful way to remember a true Aussie talent! He has done us proud!," wrote Leah of Melbourne on Australian news website news.com.au.
Dr. Vincent O'Donnell, media commentator from Melbourne's RMIT University, said it would have been hard not to award the Oscar to Ledger after the momentum built over the past year.
"Hollywood is a dream factory and it is about the future and not the past so it is terrific that he won because he was an actor of very great potential," O'Donnell told Reuters.
"Honouring someone posthumously, you would expect an ageing director or producer who had given their life to Hollywood but there was such a strong emotional push that it would have had to be a very remarkable supporting actor to have beaten Ledger this year. No one had that same emotional appeal."
But O'Donnell did not expect Ledger to make his mark on the Australian film industry as, for example, James Dean did on American film history when he died at an early age.
"I think Ledger will be fondly remembered by his professional peers but there is not a James Dean in him. Dean so much summed up youthful teenage angst, the misunderstood teenager. He even lived that role. Ledger is a quite different actor and had a separate life from onscreen."
Ledger's Oscar will go eventually to his daughter with actress Michelle Williams, his former fiancee, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided. Matilda Ledger, now 3, will receive it when she turns 18.
Although never an A-list global celebrity before his death, Ledger earned widespread attention in 2001 as the jousting squire in the action romance "A Knight's Tale" and later won critical acclaim for smaller parts in "Monster's Ball" and the Bob Dylan-inspired movie "I'm Not There."
(Additional reporting by Belinda Goldsmith in Canberra)
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Mary Milliken)
