There have been many news items about and celebrity tributes to Heath Ledger in the week since his death, but we've chosen not to report them since it, well, didn't feel entirely right to do so and some even felt a tad disingenuous.
But we wanted to bring you this beautifully written, brief and very touching piece from Newsweek written by Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight and the last person to complete a movie with Ledger. It simply says:
"Heath was bursting with creativity. It was in his every gesture. He once told me that he liked to wait between jobs until he was creatively hungry. Until he needed it again. He brought that attitude to our set every day. There aren't many actors who can make you feel ashamed of how often you complain about doing the best job in the world. Heath was one of them.
When you get into the edit suite after shooting a movie, you feel a responsibility to an actor who has trusted you, and Heath gave us everything. As we started my cut, I would wonder about each take we chose, each trim we made. I would visualize the screening where we'd have to show him the finished film—sitting three or four rows behind him, watching the movements of his head for clues to what he was thinking about what we'd done with all that he'd given us. Now that screening will never be real. I see him every day in my edit suite. I study his face, his voice. And I miss him terribly."
In the comments section below, nortonglr alerted me to the fact that this is just part of Nolan's piece. You can read the full article here.