Heath Ledger: Short career, lasting images

On a seemingly routine Tuesday afternoon, word came that 28-year-old actor Heath Ledger, best known for his Oscar-nominated role as a gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain," was found dead in a downtown New York apartment.

Soon, no matter what his autopsy shows, Ledger will be enlisted into that ghoulish gallery of movie stars who, for one reason or another, died a good half-century ahead of schedule.

But before that happens, it might be worthwhile to take a moment to remember why the death of this particular 28-year-old rates all the attention.

Like few who ever lived, much less lived to be 28, Ledger left behind moments and images that were guaranteed to outlive his mortal life. When I got the news, I immediately flashed on one of them.

In "Brokeback Mountain," having said goodbye to Jake Gyllenhaal's character after their summer together — which is the only thing they'll ever have in their lives, and they seem to know it — he walks stoically away, then enters the frame as he passes an alley. In the background is the sky. Limitless. He stops, enters the alley and becomes a silhouette. He puts his head against the wall and sobs, struggling to hide his face with his hat. He curses. He punches the wall. He yells angrily at someone who passes by and stops to look. And two seconds later, we see him in close-up, looking boyish and yet somehow like the world has just closed up, standing at the altar getting married.

The portrayal of the secret male relationship made Ledger an instant icon in the gay community, according to Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

"His powerful portrayal changed hearts and minds in immeasurable ways," Giuliano said in a statement.

"Brokeback Mountain" also was where he met actress Michelle Williams, with whom he lived until the two split up last year. The couple had a daughter, Matilda. Ledger also had relationships with actresses Heather Graham and Naomi Watts.

His roles in "The Patriot" (2000) and "A Knight's Tale" (2001) earned him heartthrob stature. But his career path steered him back to the independent movies, including "Monster's Ball" in 2001, and "The Lords of Dogtown" and "Brokeback Mountain" in 2005.

In 2007, Ledger was seen in "I'm Not There," where he played one of the Bob Dylans, and had finished filming "The Dark Knight," a sequel to "Batman Begins" in which he plays the Joker. He was in production for the movie "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus."

In an interview published in November in the New York Times, Ledger said he was "stressed out a little too much" while making "I'm Not There" and had trouble sleeping during the filming of "The Dark Knight."

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Ledger had an old-fashioned manliness — the kind that seems to have fled America and gone south in recent years, as far south as Australia. But unlike most of the old-fashioned manly stars of America's macho period, Ledger was at his best playing men in turmoil, men in trouble, men suffering from deep wounds to the spirit. At 28, he had 25 prime casting years ahead of him.

The Hollywood of today doesn't nurture acting talent. But even accepting that, just by chance and the law of averages, Ledger should have had five or six more films in his life that challenged him the way "Brokeback Mountain" challenged him. I think that would have been Ledger's career: a combination of OK movies in which he played men who were as magnificent as he looked. And better movies, in which he played men whose imposing physical presence and locked-down stoicism were a facade for an emotional life of desperation and helplessness.

Instead of looking forward, we're forced to look back — to the fragile young man he played in "Monster's Ball," who shoots himself in a fit of anguish. Or to "Casanova" and those scenes when the great seducer discovers his capacity to love one woman. Or to movies like "Ned Kelly," those ones with nothing much to recommend them besides what I once called Ledger's "big-slab-of-a-guy magnetism."

There's no way to make sense of this. No way to end an appreciation like this on an up note when the news is so sad. If there's something positive to be said, it's that the best work Ledger left behind will last forever, and the rest is already forgotten.