LA Times: Heath Ledger Not Deserving of Oscar

Here are excerpts:

"It's time to stop the canonization of Heath Ledger. He's not a tragic hero. He's not a beautiful martyr. He's just a pretty good actor who did away with himself and broke the hearts of his family and friends, and he shouldn't get an Academy Award to memorialize his death.

Ledger's brief career culminated in his portrayal of the Joker in "The Dark Knight," a role that at first seems compelling ("mesmerizing," critics have fawned) but ultimately devolves into a can-can dance of snuffling pseudo-psychopathia. It has all the subtlety of a hangover -- exactly what I'd expect from someone who headed home every night to a pill party. Still, "The Dark Knight" has soared to unprecedented success, and Ledger's name is mentioned incessantly for an Oscar."

"Each year more than 100,000 Americans die of alcohol or drug abuse. It would be madness to commemorate one such death with the greatest honor in cinema. Please give the Academy Award to someone who's had the courage to stick around."

This is a very brazen article. I think what he's trying to say is not to give the Oscar to Heath just because he died, which I agree wholeheartedly with. I think he should get it if he deserves it. The author of this piece clearly doesn't think he does, but I think his performance was quite good, and if no one is better, that it wouldn't be a crime for him to get an Oscar for it. I don't think he's a "hero" or a "martyr," but I don't think we should harbor resentment on him because of his personal life and let that effect how we evaluate his performance. You may think what he did is cowardly, and objectively, certainly it is to leave a daughter behind because of an addiction that he could certainly afford to get help for. But I don't think that changes the fact that his performance was pretty damn good. The discussion of the merits of his performance and the critique of how he lived his life are two completely different matters, and shouldn't appear in the same article, let alone influence one another.