Heath Ledger's final cinematic hurrah

Heath Ledger as Tony and model Lily Cole as Valentina in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus."  (Courtesy:  Sony Pictures Classics)

If you thought "The Dark Knight," which won a posthumous supporting actor Academy Award for Heath Ledger as The Joker earlier this year, was the late Australian actor's final film, you would be mistaken.

The mysterious 28-year-old Perth, Australia native was somewhere between a third and halfway through work on Terry Gilliam's fantastical morality tale "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" when he died of an overdose of prescription medicine on Jan. 22, 2008.

Ledger's untimely death hit me harder than some celebrity deaths.  I interviewed the "Brokeback Mountain" co-star on several occasions.  Most recently, we sat down for lunch to discuss Ledger's heroin-addiction drama "Candy" at the Four Seasons Hotel during the Toronto Film Festival in 2006.

With more than a little help from Ledger's friends Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, Gilliam was able to complete "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," which opens Jan. 8 in many markets.  (Check local listings.)

It was far from an easy task, however.  Jonathan Crow, posting a story on the Yahoo! Web site, sat down with Gilliam recently to discuss the imaginative method Gilliam used to complete a film without its star.

Click here to read the Yahoo! piece.