A last goodbye to Heath Ledger

Life is so strange… I was reading, but I could not get the phrases, I couldn’t even understand the words.

“He was found dead in his bed in one of his residences in Soho by his housekeeper at 3:35 PM ET today. Law enforcement sources tell TMZ they believe it was not a crime, adding that prescription pills were found near his body. According to NYPD a masseuse arrived at Ledger’s apartment and was let in by a housekeeper. When Ledger didn’t answer his bedroom door, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened it and found him unconscious. They attempted to wake him; when they couldn’t, they called 911. When paramedics responded, the actor was in full cardiac arrest. They attempted to perform CPR on him, but were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead at the scene. There are no immediate answers to how Ledger died. The city’s chief medical examiner’s office was unable to ascertain the cause of death based on an autopsy performed Wednesday morning. “We did the autopsy today and it was inconclusive,” Ellen Borakove, an office spokeswoman, told TIME. Further toxicology and tissue tests were needed to determine the cause of death, she said. It will be at least ten days before results become available. “

Heath Ledger was only two years older than me and at a point that his career was going up to the skies. It was a great shock to see him going there first. It’s not that he was my favourite actor but he was on of these guys that I had followed nearly from the beginning of their career and I always believed that hes was going to be great. Suddenly he entered into the James Dean category, with so many questions, that actually I don’t care to find the answers. Still it seems to me so strange.

He was born in 1979 in the 4th of April, and he and his sister took their names after the main characters of Emily Bronte’s Withering Heights.

I was in high school, when a local channel (Star if you wonder) decided to add in its programme a silly series called Roar. It was a very short-lived series trying to do with the Celtic mythology what Hercules and Xena: The Warrior Princess did for the Greek one. I only watched one episode, it was too silly even for my 16 years, but I happened to notice the young, blond leader. The series ended in a blink of an eye, but still his image had stuck in my mind…

1997 Dated Roar costar Lisa Zane…

A couple of years later, I rented to watch a teenage-high school version of Shakespear’s The Taming of the Shrew , with the title 10 Things I Hate About You with the most famous of each young cast being Julia Stiles, and he was there. His blond hair have turned black, but his strong chin and features reassured me, that there was Roar’s actor. The film was a hit, and a lot of people in there got noticed, so it was inevitable that the two leaders that made it spark had a great chance for their big break. But while Stiles went on playing the teenager, Ledger preferred to bet on diversity than typecasting.

The same year he appeared in his fellow Aussie Gregor Jordan’s film Two Hands, playing Jimmy, a young guy chased by the mob. This role earned him credit as an actor, as he got nominated in the AFI (the australian oscars). The movie didn’t really made it outside Oceania, but still people started taking him seriously. His big break in Hollywood, came when he played the son of Mel Gibson, in Roland Emmerich’s The Patriot. Not my type of film, but still a blockbuster, where the 21-year-old actor stole the attention from the macho Mel Gibson.

Thanks to the attention The Patriot offered him, Ledger was offered his first leading role, in Brian Helgeland’s debut, A Knights Tale , next to the soon-to-be noticed Paul Bettany. The film managed to make a small impact in the box office, thanks to its peculiar mixture of medieval fairytale and contemporary music hits. At that point Heath Ledger is more mature and more beautiful, leaving bit by bit behind his child Roar looks, but still he really needed a role to prove to the rest of the world his acting powers.

2000 dated Heather Graham

Probably his small role in Monster’s Ball could have make him the favors, but unfortunately, it was Halle Berry who attracted all the attention, thanks to her Oscar win. Then two really unfortunate steps were taken. Though in paper things could be great, his collaboration with Shekhar Kapur in The Four Feathers was really too long and boring, and the epic tale of friendship and betrayal, got no-one’s attention, despite playing alongside a fresh and hot young cast including American Beauty’s Wes Bentley, Kate Hudson and Djimon Hounsou. After that, his next collaboration with Two Hand’s director Gregor Jordan, an australian all-star biography of the famous Ned Kelly, never made it to the cinema’s outside the country. Another attempt to prove his leading man status failed, despite being supported by the presence of Naomi Watts, Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush.

2002 dated Naomi Watts

And after these two failed efforts, things became worst. His decision to work again with A Knight’s Tale’s director Brian Helgeland and co-star Shannyn Sossamon, added the worst movie in his filmography. The movie waited two years to be released, while it changed titles -in some countries it was presented as The Order and at others as The Sin Eater. Under no-title, there was a reason to see it. If you’s told me that he decided to end his life at this point of his carreer it would have made sense. during that period he lost the role of Alexander the Great by Collin Farrel in the Oliver Stone film.

2004 breaking up with Naomi Watts

A small break in the flops, came thanks to Cathrine Hardwicke’s Lords of Dogtown, a small independent film about the surf and skateboarding trends of the ’70’s, but still it was not the movie that could offer him the career he deserved. The reviews were ok, but still there was nothing to offer him what he needed.

And then came Terry Gilliam, Ang Lee and Lasse Hallstrom. The first one paired him with Matt Damon, playing The Brothers Grimm, in a movie that I believe could have been a lot more, if the Miramax producers had let the eccentric director do what he wanted. Anyway the movie did ok in the box office, proving that Damon and Ledger had enough star power to save a massacred by the critics low profile film.

Meets Michelle Williams

Right after that Ang Lee offered him the role that put him on the map and nobody will forget him. In Brokeback Mountain Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the confused cowboy of the ’70’s, next to Jake Gylenhaal, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway, and the subtle direction of Ang Lee, created a huge phenomenon. A gay themed movie that wasn’t afraid of its subject (like let’s say Philadelphia) that made love between homosexual being beautiful and normal, despite the obstacles. True emotions arouse and Ledger managed to gain the respect of the critics and the audience 10 years after his first appearance. It seems his second gay role would offer him the chance to prove himself (the first one was in Sweat a TV series about a school for athletes, playing a gay cyclist) The gay community discovered a new icon and suddenly everyone was talking about him.

He never gets married to Williams but they give birth to a daughter named Matilda. Her Godfather is their Brokeback co-star Jake Gylenhaal and Williams fellow Dawson’s Creek co-star Busy Phillips.

After that for a strange reason he became the “best part of this mediocre movie”, that silly line critics like to write. So in Lasse Hallstrom’s Casanova he was teh one that saved the film and blah, blah. To tell you the truth I have no idea, he was really the only one I cared about in the film, stellar box office helped him establish his star power.

After that he seems like taking a long pause, as his only appearance was in the low budget Candy a really hard to watch film as he plays a bohem poet who drags in his heroin addiction life, Candy, a student he falls in love. Despair, drama and two performances by Ledger and Abbie Cornish that really penetrate you.

Breaks up with Michelle Williams on September 2007

This year we saw him in the peculiar Bob Dylan biopic by Todd Haynes, next to Cate Blanchet and Christian Bale, an arty-film of mixed acceptance and as anyone expected low box-office performance.

And as anyone was expecting Chris Nolan’s The Dark Night to come to a theatre near us in the summer, Heath Ledger was dead…

We will see him in the nightmarish portrayal of Joker in the new Batman and after that we will let him rest in peace.

No more gossips…

I wil always though remember him singing loud Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You, that first crush…

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