A Life Ended Too Soon

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Even with his big face and chiseled jaw, Heath Ledger was one of those guys who blended in easily. In November 2005, waiting for me outside a pub, as he would've called it, he looked like any other scruffy twentysomething in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was a little bleary-eyed from being a new father but also a little wary of the press from being a heartthrob. We were meeting to discuss what would be his Oscar-nominated performance in Brokeback Mountain. We went to a local café; he didn't eat. Ledger was serious about—and not that impressed with—his work, trying to move from romantic lead to renegade. "I wanted to scrub it all away," he said then of early forays into stardom, "and start again, to see what my abilities are, if there are any." We'll never know the extent of them. On Jan. 22, he was found dead in a Manhattan apartment at 28. He leaves behind a too small body of films and a sense that he never admired his talent as much as others did.