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First actor playing a comic-book character to win an Oscar

First actor playing a comic-book character to win an Oscar
Who
Heath Ledger
What
First
Where
Not Applicable
When
22 February 2009

At the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009, Heath Ledger (Australia) was posthumously awarded a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for playing the Joker in The Dark Knight (USA/UK, 2008). Ledger’s viscerally unsettling performance, which dominated the movie and received unanimous praise from critics, also earned him a posthumous Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor.

Ledger was only the second person in history to win an acting Oscar after his death. Peter Finch (UK) was the first, winning the Best Actor Oscar posthumously for his part in Network (USA, 1976), which he'd been promoting when he died of a heart attack on 14 January 1977.

In 2020, Joaquin Phoenix (USA) became the first actor playing a comic-book character to win a Best Actor Oscar. Ironically, his win was also for playing the Joker, in the eponymous 2019 origin film that traces the character’s descent from a well-meaning but troubled stand-up comedian/party clown into a psychopathic villain.