Another Candle Snuffed Out

It’s no joke when someone dies and even less so when the life claimed is that of a star that shone so brightly if also misconstrued on the silver screen as in real life. Heath Ledger was such a man.
While adroitly unassuming, freakishly quiet, even, for a Hollywood elite, there was something everyman about him. He surely had balls, as he almost literally showed – and fortunately didn’t – in the cowboy-love drama “Brokeback Mountain,” and which he will definitely display posthumously in this summer’s upcoming “The Dark Knight." It instantly intrigued me when I first learned he would test his chops by revitalizing the role of Jack Nicholson’s “The Joker." What a risk. But he was all about taking them, which in the end robbed his life.
But he unequivocally made it his own. The leaked trailers show as much with Ledger sending chills down the backs of Batman fans young and old alike. True to the new more lurid iteration of the DC Comics classic, Ledger is nothing short of a maniac as he distorts any resemblance to Jack’s campy characterization and then creates his own nefarious moment.
It’s a shame in this day of Britney, Lindsey and Winehouse that one of the seemingly genuine good guys is gone, his life was snuffed out by a seemingly direct result of his art rather than a trapping of it.
Everyone who knew him said they didn’t see it coming. It’s not like Ledger was one of the jet-set sucking down Cristal and cocaine like it was going out of style. Rather he spent his days away from the set with his young daughter in the bohemian section of Brooklyn he called home. But even that special love couldn’t keep him from apparently falling victim to his own brilliance as he reportedly overdosed on sleeping pills, a habit formed during his role in last year's "I'm Not There" about Bob Dylan and then gripped him during the shooting of "Batman Begins 2." He reportedly told people that the his method acting so affected him that he could hardly sleep a night.
A demon claimed him much different than the usual Hollywood affliction. And we’ll all suffer for it.