R.I.P. Heath

[przed]

When I opened my email and found a message with the header "Heath Ledger found dead in New York" lurking in my Inbox, I hoped it was all a sick joke. But it's not and I feel far sadder than I've done with many celebrity deaths. Ledger was one of the very few twenty-something actors I cared about, and I was looking forward to him having a long and interesting career. Alas that it's not to be.

Brokeback Mountain aside, the Ledger movies I adore most are A Knight's Tale, with it's crazy anachronisms and splendid swashbuckling, and The Four Feathers, which takes a dated tale of English colonialism and makes of it something much more interesting.

As William Thatcher in A Knight's Tale


As Harry Faversham in The Four Feathers

Comments

[canadiansuzanne.livejournal.com]

Wow.

I am absolutely shocked. He will be missed. What a great talent wasted.

[przed.livejournal.com]

It's the waste that's bothering me the most. Such a total waste.

[sunray45.livejournal.com]

It is so very, very sad to hear of such a talented young man's death. There are some pics on my local paper's website here:

http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/01/23/7035_gold-coast-top-story.html

My heart goes out to his family.

[przed.livejournal.com]

Very sad indeed. I can only imagine how devastated his family are.

[sooguy.livejournal.com]

I was shocked when I heard it too.

Such a waste. I hope his final performance as the JOKER in the next Batman movie will be over the top. From what I have seen in the trailers it looks good.

[przed.livejournal.com]

I'm still sort of in shock about it. He's always been my goto example of the one young actor I like and care about.

The Joker performance scared me when I saw the trailer recently, but then I'm no fan of Batman Begins.

R.I.P. Heath

[kayjay206.livejournal.com]

Well...shit. :-(

Ledger was one of the very few twenty-something actors I cared about, and I was looking forward to him having a long and interesting career.

I'll sincerely second that. And the adoration for A Knight's Tale, as well.

I hadn't heard about it till now, so thanks for passing on the news, sad as it is.

Re: R.I.P. Heath

[przed.livejournal.com]

Well...shit. :-(

Yeah, that pretty much sums up how I feel. Sorry I had to be the one to tell you.

[schnuffi.livejournal.com]

Definitely a great loss. He might have become a great one.

[przed.livejournal.com]

I agree on all counts.

[londonronnie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree, Heath was excellent in The Four Feathers.

I'll tell you a little story about that - several years ago we had a holiday in Buckinghamshire (mainly so that I could do my family history research) and for old times sake we visited a village where some friends used to live and where we spent some time while we were courting. When we got there the whole village was cordoned off because they were filming The Four Feathers. On that day they were filming inside the church, which I was a bit annoyed about because I'd wanted to take a look around the churchyard. Anyway, we adjourned to the village pub (as you do) and the place was full of movie people having lunch - I've often wondered whether Heath might have been in there, although I wouldn't have known him from Adam back then. I waited in vain for the movie to appear in the cinemas but it never did, at least not in my neck of the woods, and I suspect it went straight to video. I thought it was a great film (and I was looking at it with a very critical eye as a member of my family wrote the screenplay for the original version back in the 1930s) and Heath's performance was spot on.

I'm still in shock this morning - I wonder if we'll ever know exactly what happened.

[przed.livejournal.com]

I'm still in shock myself. Every time I walked by a newspaper box today I had to give myself a little shake.

Okay, putting two and two together and coming up with four, I now know who your relative was. Jesus, that's impressive. He wrote some of my very favourite screenplays, not to mention a play I love.

[ancastar.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. While on the one hand, I wasn't a huge Heath Ledger fan (I would never go see a picture simply because he was in it), he was an actor I respected. And given the choices he made career-wise, and the work he'd done to this point, he seemed to have a lot of promise. Plus, he didn't exactly have a rep as a crazy party-goer, so the notion of him dying of a drug overdose, accidental or no, just seemed to come from left field. I haven't felt this vague sense of sadness/loss in response to a celebrity death since River Phoenix passed so many years ago.

[przed.livejournal.com]

I kinda was a huge fan. I wouldn't see everything he did (I passed on the The Order, 'cause promising cast and director aside,it mostly looked atrocious) but I did see most things he did (even Casanova, which really, don't ever feel tempted.) But he did have such promise, and it was such a total waste.

I feel exactly the same as when River Phoenix died, the sense of sadness and loss combined with a frustration with the stupidity and waste of it all.