by Jason Haskins

Created on: January 30, 2008

Nearly a week has passed since the death of Heath Ledger and the industry, along with the general public, is still a buzz over his passing. Many have wondered why such a young talent has left us so early, and many others are still awaiting a final autoposy on his cause of death. Either way, whether he was a celebrity or not, to lose a such a young talent at his age can shock even the casual observer.

Ledger, to me, was never the overly gifted actor many painted him out to be. He did have an immense talent, but his name was never on the tip of my tongue when recalling current young stars. Ledger had a fine performance in "Brokeback Mountain", and I even enjoyed him in "The Patriot". I cannot say that I have seen over half of his limited number of movies, so perhaps my viewpoints are skewed. Either way, it was a small shock to hear that he had died and I watched the news for over an hour to just learn more about him. The fact that few people knew that he had fallen this far was a shock. To this day, though, we don't know how far he really fell.

Over the past year, Ledger had seen an end to his relationship with Michelle Williams and he had tackled the role of The Joker in the "Dark Knight". This role, judging by the few trailers I have seen, probably took him to the edge of his acting capabilities. Often, an actor will delve so deep into a role he loses track of who he is. It is part of technique that some actors take part in called method acting. Ledger, possibly, drew off the own personal tragedies in his life and used that to help explore his character. The same was done with "Brokeback Mountain" and Ledger often considered himself a method actor. Marlon Brando was an actor that could be said was method, at least early in his career. Daniel Day Lewis is a current actor that uses this technique, and it has produced wonderful results. Ledger could have gone down that same path, but we'll never get to see that from him.

Maybe we'll never know much more than the facts surrounding Ledger's death. Perhaps he just wanted to get some precious sleep, and took it too far with mixing the various sleeping pills he had on him. It's a shame, considered we as a populace, follow around the exploits of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Brittney Spears, instead of paying attention to a talented young man such as Ledger. We may never know the problems he held inside. He had stated he couldn't really sleep much in recent months, and was spotted in the clubs much more than he ever was, but these things did not even come to fruition to the public until after his death. The man was a talent, that much is true, but in what would have been an endless career has now ended in another young soul lost in the world. That part truly is a shame.

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