The news came yesterday afternoon that Heath Ledger had been found dead in a Manhattan apartment. He was 28 years old.
I’ve been covering the entertainment industry for nearly twenty years now. I know we’re supposed to have deep and empathetic things to say about actors who die young — the tragedy of a talent cut short, the waste of a bright future, and so on.
But that’d be boilerplate. I never met Heath Ledger; I never knew him beyond his acting. I felt nothing upon learning of his death, other than mild surprise.
I don’t have anything to say, really, other than the obvious: It’s too bad he’s dead. He was 28, he had a young daughter, and he did indeed have a promising career ahead of him. I am still interested to see his Joker in “The Dark Knight”, and hope that, if the character comes to a bad end, the filmmakers don’t soften it out of consideration for sensitive viewers.
And I’ll say this, which is what I’ll say whenever the death of a person I don’t know seems to warrant comment: I’ve lost enough people to know that the poor guy’s friends and family must be going through hell right now. And that should be the last word on it.
Good candour. And so it goes.
Well said.
The amount of “gossip” around his death makes me quite ill. Someone died and left a family and friends behind. Let him rest.