Another brilliant but troubled actor dead, at 28.
The last movie I saw Heath Ledger in was Candy, with Abby Cornish. He gave a harrowing performance as a heroin addict consumed by love for his equally addicted wife, yet utterly ensnared and ultimately destroyed by heroin.
Turns out the actor was battling demons just as dark and persistent in his own life. Kind of like River Phoenix. Poor Heath.
Why is it that the intensely talented meet such tragic ends while the intensely stupid lead the paparazzi on a joy ride every night through the streets of LA?
In an interview with the New York Times last November, he said:
“People always feel compelled to sum you up, to presume that they have you and can describe you. That’s fine. But there are many stories inside of me and a lot I want to achieve outside of one flat note.”
Somehow prescient and somehow apt. Now of course those stories will remain untold, and that one flat note, elegiac.
(Photo still from the movie Candy)
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