The director of new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, has paid tribute to its tragic star Heath Ledger. Christopher Nolan said Ledger, who was found dead in his New York apartment last week aged 28, was a deeply charismatic person who was "bursting with creativity". Nolan said:

"Heath was bursting with creativity. It was in his every gesture. He once told me that he liked to wait between jobs until he was creatively hungry. Until he needed it again. He brought that attitude to our set every day. There aren't many actors who can make you feel ashamed of how often you complain about doing the best job in the world. Heath was one of them."

Ledger stars as The Joker in the upcoming film, which is set for release worldwide in July 2008. The movie is expected to undergo a new marketing campaign following his death, so studio Warner Bros is not seen to be "cashing in" on the tragedy, industry insiders have said. Nolan's tribute appears in the new issue of Newsweek magazine. He added:

"When you get into the edit suite after shooting a movie, you feel a responsibility to an actor who has trusted you, and Heath gave us everything. As we started my cut, I would wonder about each take we chose, each trim we made. I would visualize the screening where we'd have to show him the finished film-sitting three or four rows behind him, watching the movements of his head for clues to what he was thinking about what we'd done with all that he'd given us. Now that screening will never be real. I see him every day in my edit suite. I study his face, his voice. And I miss him terribly."

And he recalled the moment Ledger turned up to work to perform a scene on a skateboard. He wrote:

"I curse the moment that Heath first skated onto our set in full character makeup. I'd fretted about the reaction of Batman fans to a skateboarding Joker, but the actual result was a proliferation of skateboards among the younger crew members. If you'd asked those kids why they had chosen to bring their boards to work, they would have answered honestly that they didn't know. That's real charisma - as invisible and natural as gravity. That's what Heath had."

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