I couldn't believe this when I read it in the Daily Mirror here in the UK today. Tony Parsons can be a bit brutal and this tribute from a straight columnist really moved me.http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/parsons/2008/01/28/death-of-heath-ledger-broke-my-heart-89520-20301408/Death of Heath Ledger broke my heart
Tony Parsons 28/01/2008
I have an amazing number of mates who have never seen Brokeback Mountain because it's "that movie about two gay cowboys". What they are missing is an almost perfect storm of talent.
Brokeback Mountain was directed by the great Ang Lee from a classic short story by Annie Proulx. It has an Oscar-winning screenplay by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry (a great novelist himself and author of The Last Picture Show), and Jake Gyllenhaal will never be better than he was as rodeo cowboy Jack Twist.
Most of all, what my friends are missing is the portrayal of ranch hand Ennis Del Mar by Heath Ledger. A performance that ranks up there with Al Pacino in the first Godfather film, Robert de Niro in the second Godfather, Brando when he was young and thin, Montgomery Clift in From Here To Eternity, and James Dean in the three films he made before his early death.
Heath Ledger truly was as good as that, and nobody who has seen Brokeback Mountain could ever doubt it.
Heath Ledger had the kind of talent that only comes along once every 20 years and his death is a horrible waste.
It makes me laugh to read that the French trader who lost £3.6billion for Societe Generale was driven by two tragedies - splitting up with his wife and the death of his father.
Splitting up with someone is not a tragedy. Nor is burying a parent when you are in your 30s a tragedy. These are the knocks we all suffer in everyday life. Calling them tragedies is overkill.
Look at the faces of Heath Ledger's devastated parents - burying your child is a tragedy.
Think about Heath Ledger's two-year-old daughter Matilda - that little girl never knowing her father is a tragedy.
Heath Ledger was an incredible young actor with talent to burn. Losing him at the heartbreakingly early age of 28 is what a real tragedy looks like.