For those of us who love movies, the death of an actor is always an occasion for both mourning and celebration. We mourn the loss of performances not yet given, and we celebrate the great performances that have been preserved on film. News of Heath Ledger’s death, at the age of 28, certainly feels, in the moment, to be a case where the mourning will be felt more sharply than usual. The young man came out of the gates a handsome young lead, capturing a loyal female following with his work in 10 Things I Hate About You, and consolidating that fan base with the historical action romantic comedy A Knight’s Tale. In both movies he showed genuine charisma and star power, as well as solid comedic timing. He had matinee idol looks to be sure, but his quality work also hinted, for anyone paying attention, at what was to come.

In a move that few actors have the intestinal fortitude to attempt, Ledger got off the superstar career path and took a series of roles that challenged both himself and his audience. Starting with his brief but penetrating portrayal of a depressed police officer in Monster’s Ball, the young Australian actor made a clean break from the pages of Tiger Beat to the pages of Film Comment. His powerfully quiet work in Monster’s Ball was an affecting portrait of depression, one that gained power as the film devolved into screaming histrionics. He spent a few years on a pair of sweeping epics, Ned Kelly and The Four Feathers, but he gained a whole new measure of respect with his Oscar-nominated turn as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain. He was emotionally closed off, yet still communicated an internal pain felt by decades of not allowing himself to love and be loved in the way he desired. Ennis will be the role most associated with Ledger, and it is the kind of work that ambitious young actors should revisit again and again to understand what can be achieved if you have talent, ambition, script sense, and trust in your collaborators. He proved it is possible to get off the fame treadmill and become a respected actor.

This ability to change gears so substantially, to reinvent his creative self with such startling success, made Ledger an obvious choice to be one of the many actors who portrayed Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There. He goes deep down the post-modern rabbit hole, playing an actor who plays Dylan in a movie within the movie, but his embodiment of a celebrity in a dying marriage lacks any affect or grandiosity. He cuts through the layers of post-modernism, and strikes right at the heart.

Ledger had great comic timing. He was more than credible as a romantic lead. But what people will miss most about him is that he was a method actor without the mannerisms. He had that rare ability to communicate a character’s inner life without any fuss or ostentation. His celebrity, something he never could fully evade because of his penchant for dating famous actresses, never got in the way of his characters. Turns out the leading man had character actor chops. It seems so very unfair to be writing about him in the past tense.