Heath Ledger's Dark Knight performance isn't Hollywood's first posthumous success

The Dark Knight may open for the masses this Friday, but Heath Ledger—whose premature death earlier this year caused a tabloid frenzy—is already receiving what are quite possibly his best reviews ever. Los Angeles–based blogger Sam Rubin announced in late June: "I just returned from a screening and I wanted to commit this to a public forum as quickly as possible ... Ledger is THE BEST villain in a superhero movie of all time." More influential critics have shied away from prophesizing outright that Ledger's will win a posthumous Oscar, but their praise is still overwhelming: "Ledger makes [past Jokers] look like, well, clowns" (Variety). "Magnificent" (Time). (Interesting tidbit: The film is dedicated not only to Ledger, but also to a British technician who accidentally died during filming.)

Contrary to popular belief, however, Dark Knight is not his last movie. Ledger passed away midway through production of Terry Gilliam's fantasy epic The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, in which he plays an outsider who joins a theater troupe led by the magic mirror–toting Doctor Parnassus. Ledger's death could have brought production to a halt, but the fantastical disposition of the story allowed him to be replaced by the delicious trio of Jude Law, Colin Farrell, and Johnny Depp in the "otherworldly" scenes. (Ledger's scenes set in modern-day London had, thankfully, already been shot.)

Of course, Ledger isn't the first actor to pass away before his passion project hit theaters, nor is this the first time a studio has had to scramble to make final cuts and adapt final filming in the absence of a star. Read on for a list of actors whose untimely deaths cast a pall over opening weekend, caused a surge of macabre publicity, and, in some cases, forced the critics to bite their tongues.

BRAD RENFRO (January 15, 2008)
The Informers

Just days before Ledger passed, troubled actor Brad Renfro suffered the same fate in strikingly similar circumstances: an accidental heroin overdose. Only 25 years old, the child star from Tennessee was better known in his later years for his alcohol and drug abuse than his acting.

Shooting for his last film, The Informers, ended a month before his death. The independently financed flick is based on short stories of the same name written by Bret Easton Ellis. Renfro got his big break—playing a young boy who witnesses a suicide in The Client—when a Knoxville police office referred him to the director.

Ironically enough, the officer knew the boy from an antidrug skit he had performed for visiting officers at school.

AALIYAH (August 25, 2001)
Queen of the Damned

Best known for her collaborations with hip-hop producers Missy Elliott and Timbaland, Aaliyah's smooth voice earned her superstardom in the music world. As for the movie world? Not so much. Before she died in a plane crash in the Bahamas—she was shooting a tropic-themed video for her new single "Rock the Boat"—the mocha-skinned beauty starred in the critically panned Queen of the Damned.

The movie, a sequel of sorts to Interview With a Vampire, was itself somewhat damned from the start, seeing as it was churned out mainly because the movie studio's rights to The Vampire Chronicles, a series of trashy gothic novels by Anne Rice, were expiring in a few years.

Most critics were sensitive in judging Aaliyah's performance, given her recent death. Not so with the New York Observer's Rex Reed, who quipped: "The only good thing that can be said for Aaliyah ... is that her wig never falls off." Ouch. At least "Rock the Boat" was a hit.

ADRIENNE SHELLEY (November 1, 2006)
Director of Waitress

During postproduction of Waitress, a romantic dramedy she directed and costarred in, Adrienne Shelley was found dead in the bathtub of her Manhattan apartment with a bedsheet tied around her neck. While initial media reports claimed that the 40-year-old's death was suicide, police eventually discovered that an illegal immigrant doing construction at her building had battered her after she caught him stealing money and then attempted to frame the murder as a suicide.

Even more heartbreaking, Shelley did not live to see the success that
Waitress garnered: a multimillion-dollar buyout from Fox Searchlight, critical praise, and acceptance into the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. In reviewing the film, Rolling Stone bemoaned her untimely death, but looked on the bright side: "It is some solace, though, to know that Waitress is her buoyant legacy." But that's not the only thing floating in the sea of her buoyant legacy. There's also the fact that an entire episode of Law & Order was based on her tragic murder.

BRANDON LEE (March 31, 1993)
The Crow

In one scene of The Crow, Brandon Lee's character, Eric Draven, is shot by thugs who are in the process of murdering his fiancée. All would've been well, but due to some strange cosmic alignment of physics and inexperienced crew members, a dummy round (don't ask us what this means) got lodged in the barrel somehow and, when a blank cartridge was fired, was propelled into Lee's chest.

The son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee died the next day—only eight short days before lensing was slated to finish. Like Shelley, Lee's bittersweet legacy might be called buoyant. The critics loved the movie, with adjective enthusiast Todd McCarthy of Variety calling the film "a seamless, pulsating, dazzlingly visual revenge fantasy." As did kids with black-painted fingernails, albeit with fewer adjectives.

CHRIS PENN (January 24, 2006)

Unlike so many fellow dead actors, Chris Penn's death at 40 years old seems to have been brought on naturally by his obesity—as his younger brother Sean Penn has stated publicly—instead of by drugs. Penn's posthumously debuted films (The Darwin Awards, Holly) have not, unfortunately, made for particularly good eulogizing.

His small role as a Minnesota bumpkin in the critically panned Darwin Awards earned him little mention, and the New York Post's Kyle Smith gave Holly 1.5 out of four stars, saying that the movie "has been gathering dust for so long that one costar, Chris Penn, has been dead nearly two years."

The heavyset actor, best known for tough-guy roles in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and True Romance, does have one redeeming possibility left in the crime drama Aftermath—although the fact that the film has been in post-production purgatory for more than two years does not bode very well.

MITCH HEDBERG (March 29, 2005)

Known for showing up to comedic gigs either stoned, drunk, or what have you, Mitch Hedberg died at age 37 from "multiple drug toxicity" (read: speedballing). The comic, who won over a cult following with his hysterical one-liners and eccentric delivery, often joked about his personal drug use in his routines: "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."

Hedberg never ventured fully down the well-trodden path from stand-up comic to movie star, but he did make a cameo appearance as "Urethane Wheels Guy" in Lords of Dogtown, a skateboarding biopic following the influential "Z-Boys." The film is dedicated to his memory.