Heath Ledger died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills on January 22 of this year, a few hours after the Academy Award nominations were announced. It’s not just empty sentiment to predict that when the nominations are announced in 2009, his name will be on the list for best supporting actor. His performance as the Joker in the new Batman movie “The Dark Knight” is such an chilling immersion in character that the Academy could rightfully honor the performance on its own merits.

Yet there’s no denying that both pathos and publicity will be factors in the voting. Ledger was only 28, and his death was the most shockingly abrupt loss of a talent since Kurt Cobain in 1994. And like Cobain, Ledger left behind a young daughter, Matilda.

But a more apt comparison is to James Dean. After Dean died in a car crash on September 30, 1955, he was nominated for an Academy Award—twice, for “East of Eden” and “Giant.” He didn’t win—the only dead actor to be awarded an Oscar was Peter Finch for “Network’–but when “Rebel Without a Cause” was released posthumously by Warner Bros. (the same studio that produced “The Dark Knight”), it elevated Dean to the rarefied realm of cultural icon.

The guaranteed financial success of “The Dark Knight,” coupled with the artistic success of “Brokeback Mountain,” for which Ledger was nominated as best actor in 2005, may eventually make him as mythologized as Dean.

Michelle Williams, Ledger’s former fiancée and the mother of their two-year-old daughter, announced last week that she wants to film a documentary about the Australia-born actor so Matilda can remember the father she barely knew.

I can imagine the tearful Williams on stage at the Kodak Theater next February, accepting the Oscar for “The Dark Knight” on Ledger’s behalf, with her daughter safely shielded from the paparazzi.

Commemorative boxed sets of DVDs would surely follow. Maybe we’d have a choice of The History Collection, comprising “The Patriot,” “A Knight’s Tale,” “The Four Feathers,” “The Brothers Grimm” and “Casanova”; and The Platinum Edition, which would include his award-worthy work in “The Dark Knight,” “Monster’s Ball,” “Brokeback Mountain” “Candy” and “I’m Not There.” (In the latter film, he played an actor who was compared to James Dean.)

In 2009, the world will get to see Ledger’s final film, a Terry Gilliam fantasy with the unwieldy title “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.” Although Ledger died before it was finished, the role was rewritten as a shape-shifter so it could be completed by a trio of his friends: Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp.

Such was the admiration Ledger earned from his fellow actors.

At the Screen Actors Guild ceremony on January 27, Daniel Day-Lewis dedicated his best actor award for “There Will be Blood” to Ledger–whom he never met. He said that the final scene of “Brokeback Mountain,” in which the gay cowboy played by Ledger manfully mourns for his dead lover, “is as moving as anything I have ever seen.”

At the New York premier of “The Dark Knight” this week, star Christian Bale was quoted as saying “He steals the movie, and I’m quite happy to say that.”

Yet the producers of “The Dark Knight” were initially unsure how to address Ledger’s death. A marketing campaign that had focused on the Joker with the tagline “Why so serious?” was replaced with simple images of a bat-shaped logo.

But notwithstanding the ghoulishness of the Joker, Ledger’s family and friends have steered the memorials in a celebratory direction. After his burial service in Perth, Australia, attendees were encouraged to frolic in the ocean where he surfed as a teenager, and even the grieving Williams joined them.

A friend of mine who knew Ledger attended a memorial service for him at the Sony Pictures lot in Los Angeles. (This is the same friend who babysits the beagle that Ledger bought for Naomi Watts.) Musician Ben Harper sang a lullaby he had written for Matilda. Then everyone was invited to chose a piece from Ledger’s personal chess set, which he often hauled to impromptu matches in a New York City park.

My astute friend chose one of the pawns. Because when a pawn gets to the end of the line, he turns into royalty.