When Heath Ledger was found dead in January this year, I immediately felt a great loss. I have never met him, the loss was not personal, but as a cinema lover, I felt the art of making movies lost a huge asset. Even though he was only 28 when he died, his immense talent was obvious in every movie that he played portraying such different personalities. The gay cowboy role that made him famous in Brokeback mountain, was one of his later roles. I've watched him in his earlier roles in aussie movies and he was fantastic. In brokeback mountain, he was simply awsome. He portrayed his character so clearly that he was relevant to everybody, not only to reserved in the closet homosexuals living in an unforgiving environment.
He has also been a most beautiful, charismatic, funny, clumsy and self-sarcastic Don Juan I have ever seen.
Apparently his performance as Joker in Batman begins - a film so much anticipated in theaters - is so extraordinary that all his fellow cast have asked that his performance is nominated for an academy award. Michael Caine - he is also enriching with his divine presense the movie - said that Heath's Joker character was 10 times scarier than Nicholson's Joker in Tim Burton's movie, immensely scarier than Hanibal Leckter, and equally - if not more - sadist and insane as Denis Hoper character in Blue Velvet. Michael said that Heath was the scariest vilain he knew.
If nothing else, I am looking forward to see that movie to pay my respects to this marvellous actor gone so soon leaving us with only a fraction of his unbelievable talent.
