And The Oscar Goes To...Matilda Rose Ledger, But Who Will Accept The Award If Heath Wins?
What do you do with a trophy when the winner is no longer around to accept it? That's just the dilemma the Academy Awards is facing this Sunday when the Best Supporting Role is announced. The late, great Heath Ledger (we finally saw him in The Dark Knight - a creepy and amazing performance) is up for the award, but since his death last January, this has been a nagging question for all involved.
Heath, who died from an accidental overdose of prescription meds, was NOT married, and therefore the normal procedure of giving a posthumous award to one's spouse won't work. The next step is to give the golden statue to the winner's oldest child. Ok, but Heath's oldest and only child, Matilda Rose, is just three years old. Minor glitch right? But wait there's a catch. A contract must be signed and while Matilda may be as brilliant as her mum and dad some day, she's simply too young to sign. Here's more from Yahoo:
Academy tradition calls for a posthumous statuette to go to the spouse, or, if there is no living spouse, to the oldest child. Ledger wasn't married, and Matilda is his only child .Yet because she is only 3, Matilda is legally unable to sign the winner's agreement — a contract required of all nominees that says the recipient will not resell his or her Oscar without first offering it back to the academy for $1. The agreement is the academy's way of limiting what might otherwise be a lively secondary market in Oscars.
"From our point of view, somebody has to sign the winner's agreement, and a 3-year-old can't do that," says Davis. "Nor can a parent sign any kind of legal document that obligates a child to do something once they turn 18. I didn't know that before we looked into it, but it's a good law."
After conversations with Williams and with Ledger's family in Australia, the academy hit on a solution: "In the event that Heath Ledger should be selected as the supporting actor recipient, the statuette will be held in trust for his daughter by her mother, Michelle Williams , until Matilda reaches the age of 18," says Davis. "At that point, she may execute what we call an heir's agreement and keep the statuette forever — or, if she chooses not to do that, it will return to us."
Continued on the next pagePage 1 2
Follow Technorati