One quality that Ledger and Dean did share is rapid growth. Ledger gave his most entertaining and inventive star performance as the free thinker and hedonist in the period romp Casanova, which came out right after B rokeback Mountain.
For once, in a lead role, he relaxed - and conquered. In Casanova, he's sunny when he's hopping beds at night and comically quick and alert when making the Venetian social scene during the day.
At last comfortable with his good looks and with more confident than ever about his intelligence, Ledger is superb when he sprawls across a couch and rehearses how to ask a woman what's on her mind.
FOR THE RECORD - A column in Sunday's Arts & Life section misidentified one of Heath Ledger's credits. The Australian actor played a knight in A Knight's Tale.
THE SUN REGRETS THE ERROR
Dean's greatest performance was his last one, as Jett Rink, the disreputable Texas ranch hand turned fabulous oil tycoon in George Steven's Giant. He creates a character as unsentimental and emotional, as unique and influential, as any in American movies. He speaks in a sometimes comic, sometimes moving mumble that presages Benicio Del Toro's in The Usual Suspects. And when he stomps out the outline of his small parcel of land in giant steps, he makes you feel the birth of pride in ownership.
In just three movies he made the transition from a specialist in embattled juveniles to an actor who could remarkably evoke the emotional scars of a grizzled, wasted old man.
According to the run of recent feature stories, Ledger enjoyed nothing more than doing the character-actor's vanishing act and disappearing into a role.
"If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!" says the Joker in the Batman graphic novel, The Killing Joke. That's how the artistically adventurous Ledger must have thought about the future. Let's hope Ledger's Joker crowns his career the way Dean's Jett Rink did his.
michael.sragow@baltsun.com
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