When I heard that Heath Ledger had died my first thought was the same that hits me anytime a young celebrity I respect dies: That it isn’t true; that our modern world, which demands immediacy in all forms of journalism, has just played a cruel trick on me. My second thought was much more troubling but probably a very common one. I wondered how this would affect the release of “The Dark Knight,” the sequel to “Batman Begins” due this summer.

Heath Ledger plays the diabolical Joker and according to all the reports, he’s astonishing in the role. Just to make things clear, I was ravenously anticipating this movie the moment “Batman Begins” ended. I have placed all my hopes and dreams for nerdy nirvana on July 18th, 2008, “The Dark Knight” release date. I lapped up every bit of casting news, especially the rumors swirling around who should play the Joker. Who could redefine the role Jack Nicholson had owned so completely in the original “Batman”? Would it be the rising star Paul Bettany? Or fan-favorite Crispin Glover or maybe even Mark Hamill, who voiced the character so perfectly on the 90′s cartoon? When the announcement came from on high that it would be none of these people but Heath Ledger. well, all us net nerds took a step back.

“Wow,” we collectively thought. “That could work.”

And it did. Everyone from fans who have snuck peaks at dailies to co-workers Michael Cane and Christopher Nolan are raving about his performance. So great, it’s a highly anticipated comic book movie with a great pedigree and even better buzz. That does not excuse my thoughts and emotions turning towards the possibility of a third sequel now that the guy who played the Joker is dead, instead of towards the fact that a guy is dead.

A real guy, with a family and a kid and a future. We should not remember him as a series of characters and performances, but as a man who entertained us with great skill and passion from the time he was a teenager. It felt good to get up on my high horse and survey the world now wiser for having gone through this experience. Then I remembered Brad Renfro.

Brad Renfro died one week ago on January 15th, in his LA apartment. He was 25 years old. Renfro had been a young Hollywood star with a future as well. He just had the bad taste to die several years after his star had dimmed. After starring in “The Client” at age 11, Renfro went on to be a teen heart throb at the same time Jonathan Taylor Thomas was hot. He was actually Huck Finn in the JTT-starring “Tom and Huck.” But he wasn’t just a star. He was an actor. He proved himself in films like “Apt Pupil” acting against the great Ian McKellen. and “Sleepers” which cast him as a victim of sexual abuse. And he was still working. He actually had finished filming a role in the upcoming Bret Easton Ellis adaptation “The Informers” working under the same director who guided Heath Ledger in “Ned Kelly.”

But Renfro certainly wasn’t in danger of garnering any Oscar nominations or plum roles in big-budget popcorn-fare like Ledger. Renfro died never being able to rise above a troubled past that had included some rather public reports of heroin abuse. He certainly didn’t have a live feed of his body being carted away posted on TMZ.com, like Ledger did. When Brad Renfro died, I remembered his name plastered across many childhood copies of “Disney Adventures” and his thick Memphis drawl in “The Client” and moved on.

But I couldn’t move on from Heath Ledger’s death. That affected my anticipated future as a movie-goer. What will happen with Batman? If Renfro had died in 1998 with “Apt Pupil” in the can, maybe there would have been more of an uproar. The star of Bryan Singer’s new movie dead? Impossible! Or for that matter, what if Owen Wilson had succeeded in his apparent suicide attempt late last year? How much longer would we have paid attention to that story?

It’s hard for me to reconcile my generally empathetic feelings about Heath Ledger the man and my selfish worries about Heath Ledger the Hollywood player. But I still can’t shake how sorry I feel for Terry Gilliam, who has been forced to shut down production on yet another movie (this has to be his fourth or fifth failed movie) because his star has died. So did Gilliam’s star die, or did a man from Perth, Australia, who happened to be well known, pass away?

The fact that it was both is what makes this story so publicly tragic. If that’s true, then the fact that Brad Renfro died a Hollywood has-been’s death, when his career wasn’t that far off track, is the stuff of Shakespeare.

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