Obituary - Heath Ledger
He had been home to Perth for Christmas, where the press had mercifully left him alone, and he was back in chilly New York: sick, tired and - probably - homesick.
As another long-time Australian-New Yorker observed to me this morning: “I think it is very hard for Australians to understand the almost constant ache of homesickness for those who leave. You simply never get over it, and I doubt if he did.”
Then, of course, there was his recently failed relationship with Michelle Williams with whom he had a two-year-old daughter, Matilda; no wonder a virus was able to grab such a hold and bring him down so hard. The only blessing in this sad, sad time is that he is not here to witness the kind of maniacal media scrum and speculation that he so loathed and with which he was so unwilling to cope.
Ironically, in writing of the Sydney Theatre Awards on Monday, 21 January, I said of Cate Blanchett:“The cameras were out in force - for Cate Blanchett, of course - but it was an evening that was about so much more than empty celebrity. As her stoical and generous presence affirmed. Given that she’s a down-to-earth, normal human being who just happens to be one of the best actors Australia has ever produced, she puts on an extraordinary performance every time she ventures out of doors.
”Because she does it with such grace and style, however, few would realise how difficult it must be to have cameras and eyes unrelentingly trained on your every move, every moment.”
And Blanchett has a constantly supportive husband beside her, some two decades’ experience in the spotlight and considerable professional training, as well as an unusual inner strength of her own which enables her to deal with the kinds of situations that Heath Ledger has always found excoriating.
In retrospect, Heathcliff Andrew Ledger probably had more in common with Marilyn Monroe, another actor whose heart and soul and thin skin were on the line with every performance and who had little to protect that vulnerability in private.
A star in the making from early on, with a rare intensity and imagination, Ledger was a phenomenal talent whose abilities quickly outstripped his beginnings in Australian television even though for a while he achieved unwanted notoriety through a relationship with the camera packs that dogged his every move. The more he asked to be left in peace, the more he was hounded and the less graciously he dealt with the constant scrum which was particularly bad in Australia. Moving to New York gave him a measure of privacy, however.
In his eight year movie career he graced a startlingly large number of movies - great and not-so-great - includingTen Things I Hate About You, Blackrock, Two Hands, The Patriot, Monster’s Ball, A Knight’s Tale, The Four Feather, Ned Kelly, The Order, Candy, The Brothers Grimm, Lasse Halstrom’s version of Casanova and, of course, Brokeback Mountain and I’m Not There.
He was nominated for Best Actor among Brokeback’s movie’s eight Academy Award nominations for his performance as the gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar. It was a career-defining role even though he lost to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s lisp in Capote. He was also nominated by the Golden Globes, BAFTA and SAG and won the AFI award.
In his most recent work released in Australia, he is thought, by many to have anchored and been the best thing (aside from Cate Blanchett) in an otherwise wayward film “about” Bob Dylan: I’m Not There. His role as a particularly psychopathic rendering of The Joker in the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight is due to be released later this year. At the time of his death he was working on another movie with Terry Gilliam, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, even as the trailers for The Dark Knight were on-screen in US cinemas.
At the age of 28 it could have been said that Ledger’s career on screen had barely begun, despite the accolades. He had already been bracketed with Marlon Brando, Sean Penn and James Dean because of the extraordinary mix of good looks, acting intelligence and intensity and the bold choices he was clearly prepared to make. Now we will never know. He leaves behind real shock and sorrow among fans for the untimely snuffing out of a great talent. And then there is the sad, sad loss of a young father, loving son and brother.
Heath - rest in peace.
