Heath Ledger – The Creative Powerhouse

I have to admit; I’m a big fan of Batman movies. Since Tim Burton’s version in the 80s, I’m in love with the character and the entire Gotham world. The film which impressed me the most was the second installment of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, The Dark Knight, with Heath Ledger in the role of Joker. For me, his performance of this most notorious villain is the best thing ever happened on movie screens, but that’s just my humble opinion.

A few days ago I was watching a documentary about him, after 15 minutes I pulled up his Chart, and the entire story for this blog post was already written, in my head, within minutes. It was that easy.

Creative Powerhouse

Heath Ledger was an incredible creative powerhouse. In only eight years of his career, he left numerous movies with superb performances. Always driven to try something new, Ledger could never repeat a role or a character, or to fit any frame given by movie studios. Except for first few years, most of his work was entirely controlled by him, movie directors would just leave him to do his thing, and he never failed them.

Exceptional personality requires exceptional Five Element Chart, so let’s see what is happening there.

Click on the photo to enlarge

Now, those who are familiar with our method will notice one thing, and that is weak Artist and missing Performer Talent. How come such creative person doesn’t have at least one of these two Talents active?

The thing is, creativity can come in different forms and shape. Artist and Performer are the very classic forms of creativity, but in Heath Ledger case it’s something special. His most active Talent was Pioneer, which means that he was driven continuously to explore something new. The acting was not his only passion; he was thoroughly emerged and interested in directing movies, producing music, photography and loads of others stuff. He was a real explorer, and he could never limit himself to just one profession. In last few years of his life he was more and more interested in directing movies, which is typical Pioneer Talent activity, and if he didn’t die so young, it’s pretty sure that he would be a full-blown movie director in his later age.

Pioneer Talent gave him this enormous energy, he could never sit still, would continuously experiment with something, bother other people to join him, and because everybody loved him, they would let him test anything on or with them. The friendships were essential for him. Self-esteem Talent represents this, and it manifests in his chart very near to his Master Element, Yin Metal, which means friends are always around him, and he continually does things with them. His house was full of people, even when he would be away, shooting a movie, his home would be buzzing with the creative force of his friends.

Mental Power

Another key Talent in his chart is Philosopher, very prominent and influential in this case. Philosopher Talent is known for its uniqueness and eccentric behavior. It gave him a tremendous mental power, and when you combine it with Pioneer Talent, you get a type of person who can’t fit any social norms and will behave most of the time unexpectedly.

Warrior Talent, which is also very solid, fit this story very well because this is also one of those Talents which are not following the rules and are usually very energetic.

On top of this, all his elements are Yin, there is no single Yang, which also brings more unusual, in his case extremely extrovert behavior.

Price of creativity

So, as we can see, everything in his chart points out towards something extraordinary, but also it indicates that he is very much out of balance. He had too much energy, some of it he managed to convert into creative work, but he had a problem with sleeping and occasional depression and anxiety.

He tended to exhaust himself; the body couldn’t follow all this excessive drive within him. On his last day, he was shooting quite physically demanding scenes, he got wet and cold and went back to a hotel in not good shape. Probably he took some medicine to help him sleep, it all hit together, and body finally gave up on him.

It’s a sad story, he was loved by everyone, he had so much still to give, but this seems a classic story, in line with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain, who all died very young, almost same age as Heath Ledger. All these people were creative powerhouses, and that creativity drove them to the limits of their physical capabilities until it came to the point where the body couldn’t follow anymore.

This pattern shows us that although people might hold enormous talent and creativity, their charts might be entirely out of balance. Unfortunately, such dynamic cannot last for very long, due to our human limitations.