Heath Ledger, cut short while on the rise

The surprising death of Heath Ledger, at age 28, ends all too soon a career that had been jelling into a fine body of work, marked by risk, fearless immersion and the seeming respect and affection of fans and colleagues alike.

It is not difficult to imagine his fame and legend continuing to grow, making him, if not the James Dean of his generation, most certainly its River Phoenix. All three were actors who seemed able to transpose their interior pains into external gesture and behavior, providing deep insight into the emotional states of their characters, and in turn ourselves.

Ledger had always seemed to gravitate toward roles that featured him as the troubled outsider, even in his earliest roles.

He elevated “10 Things I Hate About You” – a 1999 teen take on “The Taming of Shrew” – with his buoyant charm and dark-laced charisma. He also played the tortured son of Billy Bob Thornton’s prison guard in 2001’s “Monster’s Ball.”

But it was in 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain,” for which Ledger earned an Academy Award nomination for best actor, that he seemed to turn a real corner in his acting, bringing tremendous nuance and sympathetic anguish to his role as Ennis Del Mar, a man struggling to bridge the gap between the person he is and the person he would want to be.

After “Brokeback” he seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds as a performer.

His turn in last year’s “I’m Not There,” playing an actor who grows isolated by his fame and no longer able to connect to his wife and children, was remarkable. His scenes with Charlotte Gainsbourg as his wife provided the film – a look at the artistic personas of Bob Dylan – with its heart.

Ledger’s performance as the Joker in the upcoming “The Dark Knight,” in which he takes on the role already made iconic by Jack Nicholson, has been eagerly anticipated.

It will now provide an unintentional epitaph to a life and career that seem painfully cut too short.