A voice of sanity. Regardless of the theme of Brokeback Mountain, his acting in it was magnificant.
I’m sad to hear this. I know he was in Brokeback Mountain which I did not see but he was also in Mel Gibson’s The Patriot (1999) and Ledger was great in that movie as Gibson’s son. Great movie. He seemed like a good actor.
Great actors have played gay before. Who can forget William Hurt playing a flaming transvestite in Kiss of the Spider Woman having a sex scene with Raul Julia. But that was a great movie. For whatever reason, Brokeback Mountain became some kind of manifesto for homosexual deconstructionism, and many of us found it offensive.
Really, it’s too bad he didn’t live long enough to overcome the typecasting. Billy Crystal played such a convincing gay man in Soap lo these many years ago and it took a very long time for me to see him as anything else, but eventually I did.