… because it’s a year since his death, he was nominated today for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, and I finally saw The Dark Knight last weekend.

It’s been a quick year for me. An awful lot of life-changing stuff has happened in it, with someone of my own to mourn as well as the stress of moving jobs and the happiness (and stress) of getting married.

Every time I’ve watched a film with Heath in it though, I’ve spared a thought for his family. And for his fans, that we won’t ever have any more films with him to entertain us. He was definitely growing as an actor - the fact that I watched The Dark Knight without ever really seeing the actor under the character of the Joker, regardless of the makeup, rather underscored that for me. Especially with the contrast of having recently watched A Knight’s Tale (one of my favourite films, I admit it, for so many reasons) in which I was conscious of the actor through much of it.
I don’t know that he deserves an Oscar for playing the Joker, mind you - I thought his role in Brokeback Mountain was much more worthy.

But anyway, that’s all I had to say. Nothing very much, just some of the things that struck me while driving home, when I heard the Oscar nominations on the radio.

… by Heath Ledger’s death. When I read about it on the BBC news website last night, my first thoughts were that it couldn’t be true, that it was a sick joke or a mistake or…
I could feel reality fracturing; what it really was and what I (and probably so many others) wanted it to be.

He was an actor I liked a lot. 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight’s Tale are films I’ve watched over and over; I’ve been looking forward to his turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight. And he was truly brilliant in Brokeback Mountain. I’ll miss him as an actor; my sympathies are with his family and friends.