Look out celebs.....

.....I'll be heading back to Illinois

I've been in Illinois twice in my life, once for three days and then again this month for eleven days. Now it would appear that for every three days I'm in Illinois a celebrity must die.
When I was in Chicago in 1994 Kurt Cobained himself and this time? Brad Renfro, Suzanne Plecette, Bobby Fischer and Heath Ledger all died. Now Plechette and Fischer were no great surprise due to age and or health concerns, Renfro though was 25 and Ledger 28. Renfro was apparently a drug abuser, supposedly having been arrested for cocaine and heroine possession in the past, that leads me to believe that his death by "unknown causes" was another Belushi/Farley incident, I'd like to think otherwise but I think we've all seen too many people struck down by drug and alcohol abuse. Don't get me wrong, I don't think he deserved to die but if he was still on drugs than his death was sadly a predictable one.
Ledger apparently may have been a suicide or an accidental overdose on sleeping pills, don't think they've said. I hear Ledger was a good actor, though to be honest I don't think I've ever seen anything he's been in, but I was looking forward to his turn as the Joker in the Dark Knight this summer. By all accounts he was very good playing a very dark version of the character. Now this is where I go on my rant. Two reports I saw say that he became so immersed in playing such a dark character that he couldn't sleep and that he had become consumed by the Joker. What the flip people? I know there are some actors who "become" the character but by all accounts Ledger was drawn to darker roles and used acting as a means to control or understand his own dark side so I imagine no matter how much he became wrapped up in playing the Joker I doubt that was the cause of his death.
Sometimes the media makes so much of an actor's role that we begin to feel that he is that character and forget that he is just a flesh and blood human being like any of us. They have the same fears and weaknesses and humanity as any of us, they make mistakes just like the rest of us and they can have the same bad reactions to medications as any of us. I'm really hoping that Ledger's death was accidental and not a suicide, not because I am opposed to suicide, if you want to die then do it right and don't hurt anyone else, but because I'm selfish, I don't want the Dark Knight film or the Joker character to be marred by "darkness" in the media. Already the comparisons are being made to Brandon Lee's death while shooting the Crow, really it doesn't make any sense, Lee was killed on set while filming the movie and, let's be honest here, the movie was based on a cult comic that the average person never would have heard of had Lee not tragically died while making the movie. Batman is different, this is a character that almost every American knows of, as is the Joker, and this is one of the most anticipated movies of the Summer so let's knock off the nonesense and focus on the reality of the situation there is a two year old girl who will now grow without knowing her father, that my friends is the humanity of the situation.

Here's to expecting Oscar talk for Ledger for playing the Joker and more importantly here's to hoping its well deserved.