I don’t really know how I feel about this yet. I feel like I need to know how he died before I can really feel shocked or deeply saddened or whatever.

For the moment, I just wanted to say that he was such an amazingly talented, thoughtful person. The role that I will remember him for was Ennis in Brokeback Mountain. This film really affected me. His character was real!

“Yeah, a big part of Ennis, purely because as you said, there were very few words to convey his story and his battle, a big part of it was actually in fact going inside him and trying to explain his battle. I knew it was going to be a very physical performance and so I wanted to physicalise this battle within his posture or lack of posture, within his accent, like his voice was very important. I wanted him to be clenched and I wanted his mouth to be a clenched fist and I wanted to words to be just punching their way out from within. Just any form of expression had to be painful. So I spent a lot of time developing his stance, his physical and mental posture, cause that was going to be really important to the character.” – Health Ledger from the 7.30 Report (Jan 13, 2006)

Photo: Mick Tsikas – AAP