A Tribute to Heath Ledger

…I don’t get how anyone could not feel him deserving of one

My first real memory of ever watching Heath Ledger act would probably have to be in A Knight’s Tale. I was just a little kid when it came out, and some of the content was probably over my head a bit, but it didn’t matter. I love that movie. It’s one of my favorite movies. It’s one of those movies that I have to watch whenever I see it on TV; it doesn’t even make a difference that I own the DVD. That movie is pure brilliance, and I can’t help but watch it.

If anyone has read “Relating an Experience,” you’ll know that I wrote about Brokeback Mountain. My feelings on that movie have changed since I saw it two years and one day ago (and I mean that quite literally; I saw it on January 22, 2006 and wrote “Relating an Experience” on January 23, 2006, exactly two years ago). I’ve seen the film several times since that point, and it’s grown on me. While, when I first saw it, I wasn’t impressed with the film, I had to admit that Heath and Jake Gyllenhaal did amazing jobs in their roles. They impressed me beyond belief. Their characters were beautifully portrayed.

The Patriot and 10 Things I Hate About You are two of the best movies Heath Ledger ever did, particularly the latter, in my opinion. 10 Things I Hate About You is just a fun, classic movie that I fell in love with upon watching it. His performance in The Patriot was astounding, and that movie is superb on so many levels. You can praise the films all you want, but when it comes down to acting ability, that’s when you know whether or not a film is good. Heath Ledger never came up short.

Of course Heath has been in other films, like The Four Feathers, Monster’s Ball, and Ned Kelly, but as I have a limited understanding of those movies and haven’t seen much of them, I don’t feel I have the right to comment on them. I’m sure that he did an excellent job in those as well, though, and I feel confident in the idea that he gave it his best shot. Heath was my favorite Australian actor. Heath was one of my favorite actors period.

Yesterday was the two year anniversary of my watching Brokeback Mountain for the first time. I put that in my away message, just to commemorate the occasion. I can never forget the date of watching it just because of the huge impact it had on me at the time; it’s a date I could never forget. And now I’ll never be able to, due to the events that have since transpired.

I was doing homework on the computer and was talking to my best friend on my cell phone with the speaker on. We were talking about trivial bullshit, nothing worth commenting on. All of a sudden, I heard beeping. The beeping was because I got a text message, I knew, but I didn’t know who it could be from. I checked, and saw it was my sister. That was a little weird, as she was still at work.

“Leah,” I said, “If you hear beeping, it’s me texting back my sister.”

She said alright and kept talking and I opened the message. It read, “Oh my God! Heath Ledger is dead! My world is falling apart!”

Needless to say, my response wasn’t really all that intelligent. “What?” I texted back right away.

“I know! Oh my God! It’s like JUST being reported. Supposed overdose!”

“No fucking way.”

She didn’t text me back, but a few minutes later, she called me. I had since hung up with Leah, and now we were IMing. I had related the situation to her over the phone, and she was joining me on my quest online for information. My first idea was to check Perez Hilton, but the site was so overloaded with viewers that I couldn’t even get on. I checked IMDB; there was nothing.

Okay, I thought. Maybe this was just a joke. I told Leah over IM: I hope that this is just some fucktard making shit up, and that Heath is safe in Perth with his family enjoying a piña colada. She agreed.

When my sister called, we spent a few minutes chatting on the phone, basically repeating ourselves over and over again.

“No way!”

“I know!”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s everywhere.”

And indeed it was. Everywhere you looked, there was the same headline: Heath Ledger Dead at 28. From Perez to CNN to People, everyone was reporting it. And they were all reporting the exact same information.

When I found out, I felt like crying. It hit me directly in the heart and broke it clear in half. A week ago, I found out that Brad Renfro died, also apparently from a drug overdose. That was sad, and I felt bad about it for a little while, because Brad Renfro was a good actor, and he had a lot of promise. I never really got over it entirely; it was still sad to think about. Then, suddenly, I’m hit with this wave of information about Heath Ledger. I never got time to come to terms with Brad Renfro’s death, and all of a sudden, I heard about Heath Ledger.

The death of Brad Renfro bent my heart. The death of Heath Ledger just broke it apart, shattered it, tore it to pieces.

People say to me, “Why are you so upset? It’s not like you knew him. You weren’t friends with him.”

They’re right. Did I know Heath Ledger? Nope, not even a little bit. But that isn’t the point, is it?

Heath Ledger, at only twenty eight, is gone. Never again will he act, never again will he spend time with his two-year-old daughter Matilda. He’ll never be able to actually win an Oscar, something that was robbed of him two years ago by Philip Seymour Hoffman for a film that I don’t even understand.

When you look at it objectively, I don’t really have a right to feel sad. I mean, it’s not like I personally knew Heath. I didn’t know him at all. All I knew is trivia information that I uncovered online, and how he made me feel whenever I watched one of his movies or interviews. To be quite frank, the idea that I even feel depressed about this at all seems crazy, doesn’t it? Especially since his family must be heartbroken, and with every right to be.

Yet… I don’t know how I can not feel sad… I don’t get how people are just going through the day saying, “Oh, yeah. Heath Ledger. He died, right? Wasn’t he in the gay cowboy movie?”

Or, my own personal favorite, as stated in an away message by one of my friends last night, “HEATH LEDGER DIED!!! Another perfect body gone to waste,” continued with, today (spoken, mind you), “He was so hot.”

Is that really all people can relate to Heath, Brokeback Mountain and his oh-so-attractive physical features? I understand that Brokeback is a film that he will forever be associated with due to its content (not that I approve of people’s perception under those circumstances, and I think people should be over it by now, but it is what it is). I agree that Heath Ledger was a very attractive person. Yet, my first thought when I found out about his death wasn’t Brokeback or his appearance. It was, “How could someone so young die so unexpectedly? And how could he leave behind everyone he loved and who loved him?”

I wore as much black today as I could. Is that a little eccentric? Yeah. I’m not even going to try to deny it. But, even perhaps more so than Heath’s death, I wore it to reflect my own thoughts and feelings on the matter. All day today I felt off balance. I just didn’t feel right. I felt depressed, sad… I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The black showed that quite nicely.

If you ask me why I feel so affected by this, I couldn’t tell you. It’s probably similar to how Nirvana fans felt when Kurt Cobain died, or how fans of River Phoenix felt when he died. Many of them didn’t know Kurt or River, but it didn’t stop them from feeling shocked and sad and upset and angry about it.

I haven’t really felt the emotion of anger yet, but I’m sure it will pop up eventually. After all, according to reports, Heath was doing drugs. And while it isn’t known for sure whether or not it was drugs that caused his death, or if it was accidental or intentional, drugs still played an important role in his life. Things will just feel ten times worse if I find out that he committed suicide, though. I know they will. I think I’ll feel angry just because of how stupid doing drugs is. Or, perhaps not so much the doing drugs aspect, but that he did them when he had so much to care about. He had his career, his family… He had Michelle and Matilda. And even though they weren’t together anymore, I think everyone knows that Heath truly did love Michelle, and her likewise. Matilda goes without saying.

More people have been lost to drugs than we even remember. River Phoenix, case in point, who overdosed on drugs at the Viper Room in LA, the club owned by Johnny Depp… And now, Heath…

I won’t be able to watch any Heath Ledger films for a while. It will just take some time to adjust… I will eventually, but it still hurts in the meantime. It hurts like hell.

Heath Ledger, in and of himself, was a talented actor and beautiful human being, despite whatever issues he may have had in his personal life. I’ll never forget the feelings I had whenever I watched one of his movies or one of the interviews he gave. I’ll never forget him.

It’s unreal.

So, Heath, if you ever see this… You were a light to the world. Your friends, family, and fans will all miss you. Hopefully you’re at peace now, and I’m sure we’ll all meet someday.

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Notice:

Just my own personal reflections on the matter. I was inspired to write this yesterday, but couldn’t really summon any coherent sentences. I decided today, resolutely, that I would write it after viewing this:

if the link doesn’t work, and it probably won’t since FP has this weird thing with links, and you can bear to do it, just go to godhatesfagsDOTcom. In the right hand corner, there’s a little link talking about picketing Heath Ledger’s funeral. Click on that.

I was appalled after viewing that. And just a message to everyone… Heath Ledger is apparently in hell right now, if those bigoted assholes on that website are even remotely right (which they’re not, but for the sake of the rant, let’s pretend they could be). So, if Heath Ledger is going to hell, then I am most definitely going to hell. And I’ll be proud to be there, because at least I’ll be in good company.