Brad Renfro (July 25, 1982-January 15, 2008) Heath Ledger (April 4, 1979-January 22, 2008)

What is happening to the young talent these days? They’re dropping like fucking flies!

I was shocked beyond all belief at the news of the deaths of these two young stars, especially since they happened within a week of each other. How can this be happening? Two very talented guys just dying.

Ok, unfortunately, I wasn’t TOO terribly shocked by Brad’s death. The kid had been on and off of drugs for a while and was always getting into trouble. (Back in 2000 he stole a fucking boat!)

But Heath Ledger?! The guy had a little girl and had never been in ANY trouble as far as I can remember. He seemed to be settled down and well-adjusted. When my friend called and told me that Heath had died I almost couldn’t move.

Now, before I get into the deluge, there’s still a chance that Heath’s death was an accident. He had been taking sleeping pills to try to catch up on some rest after the grueling shoot that was The Dark Knight. (Jack Nicholson apparently warned him against taking the role of the Joker. “I told him so” was all he could say when told of his death. Huh?) And there were prescription bottles found near him, so it could very well have been a reaction between those and the sleeping pills. They haven’t found any narcotics in his system. BUT they apparently found a rolled up twenty dollar bill in the room…with no drug residue.

Sigh. We may never know what happened there.

Brad Renfro was discovered basically on the streets of Knoxville, Tennessee by Joel Schumacher who cast him in The Client in 1994. Even at the young age of 11 people saw a promise in him. Co-stars Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon knew that he would go on to bigger and better things.

Instead, Brad kept a pretty low profile, making small movies. The biggest ones were Disney’s Tom And Huck and Sleepers starring Brad Pitt and Jason Patric. The Cure, his second film, was a touching drama about two boys trying to find a cure for AIDS for the younger boy (played by Jurassic Park’s Joseph Mazzello).

After 1998’s Apt Pupil (a pretty good rendering of a very creepy Stephen King story starring Ian McKellan as an escaped Nazi), Brad did mainly indy films with almost no profile at all. Ghost World got very good reviews and some box office, but other than that it was movies like Bully (which barely got released in 2001), Deuces Wild and The Job.

The last movie he did that anyone really saw was The Jacket, a psychological thriller with Adrien Brody and Kiera Knightley that did pretty well at the box office, but didn’t win too many fans with critics.

Brad had just finished 10th And Wolf and The Informers when he died. They may find an audience, but only because of Brad’s death, most likely. We’ll see.

Heath was first seen on these shores in the immensely popular 10 Things I Hate About You with Julia Stiles. It was a witty teen redo of The Taming Of The Shrew that won him heartthrob status with a lot of young American girls who had no idea that he was Australian…even though he didn’t do a very good job of hiding his accent.

After starring in the short-lived fantasy tv show, “Roar,” Heath went on to play Mel Gibson’s son in The Patriot and a young knight vying for the heart of a princess with David Bowie songs in A Knight’s Tale. Not earth-shattering movies, but a lot of fun and they cemented his reputation with the girls.

But then he did a strange thing for a “heartthrob.” He quit doing pop movies. His next feature was Monster’s Ball, where he played Billy Bob Thornton’s suicidal son. Although he got no physical accolades, just about every critic and fan singled him out as displaying the promise that a lot of people had already seen in him.

With movies like The Four Feathers, Ned Kelly and The Order, he kept the dark coming and he kept getting better even if the movies weren’t so great.

He did some lighter fair, such as Lords Of Dogtown and The Brothers Grimm, but his real breakout was right around the corner.

2006’s Brokeback Mountain played him well against type as a cowboy who realizes that love sometimes comes from a place that you would initially resist. He was nominated for an Oscar and, in a year that didn’t include Philip Seymour Hoffman’s perfect portrayal of Truman Capote, he probably would have won.

His movies since then (Casanova and Candy) haven’t had the high profile of that one, but people still loved him in both roles.

His most recent release was I’m Not There, Todd Solandz’s unconventional biopic of Bob Dylan where he plays an actor who is an incarnation of early to mid-70s Dylan. While he was not proud of the role, he was very good in it.

Heath had just wrapped on The Dark Knight and was feeling a lot of pressure after the stressful shoot. He was working on The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus when he died. Just one more Gilliam feature that we may never see. They are deciding whether to recast or just scrap the whole project.

Damn.

Of course, I just heard that Johnny Depp may be taking his place.

Both of these guys had so much ahead of them and it angers me that we will never have another project to look forward to. I was a fan of both of them and now there’s no more. No more great performances for me to get pissed off when no one recognizes them. No more movies to see and think, “MAN, I wish everyone was this good!” No more movies for me to talk people into seeing because, really, it’s great. Just give it a shot.

Sigh.

I’m so tired of young, talented people dying such horrible deaths. It’s one thing if they’re accidents or diseases. That’s almost unavoidable. But to kill yourself with drugs is such a fucking waste. And it’s completely their fault, so it’s hard to feel any sympathy for them.

Of course, as I said, it’s still on the table whether Heath was doing drugs or commited suicide or just mixed the wrong “good” drugs. We’ll see.

But if he did kill himself, then I’m pissed at him, too. And I’m so sorry for the family he left behind. I’m sorry for the friends and families that both he and Brad left behind. (Including the son that no one knew he had in Japan. He was hanging out with him a few days before he died.) They are the true victims here. I hate to be that cliched, but it’s true. People who kill themselves like this aren’t victims. They’re stupid. They don’t deserve to die at all, but they are still stupid. But the families are left with the sorrow and the pain.

I’ll let Ian McKellen have the last word on Brad…although it could probably apply to both:

“I first caught sight of Brad Renfro when he was kicking a football around with Bryan Singer on the half-built set of Apt Pupil in Hollywood. He was a kid having fun and that’s how I shall always remember him. But he was more than that. He was a proper actor and when we worked together he was determined to be accepted as such. On set, he was blusteringly confident although it was obvious he would have benefited from training as an actor. Yet, as Todd, the disturbed teenager in Apt Pupil, he tapped into an inner demonic world and carried the film on his young shoulders. He longed to belong in the alien world which perhaps in the end overwhelmed him. He was only 25 and it is dreadful we shan’t see all that he might have achieved.”