Three actors whom I've interviewed over the years passed away in only one week, and while anyone's death is devastating, it's particularly sad when people die before their time. And, what's also interesting about these three is that they each had their own distinctive performances that helped the general public understand bisexuality a bit more clearly.

They are Brad Renfro, who was found dead at 25 on Jan. 15th, Suzanne Pleshette, who died of lung cancer at 70 on Jan. 17th, and of course Heath Ledger, who died of an apparent accidental drug overdose at 28 on Jan. 22nd.

Remember Brad Renfro

First Brad Renfro; who has had a history of drug abuse from the time he was a kid—pot, cocaine and heroin. He was someone I interviewed between rehabs. A cocky, brooding kid, he said he never thought he was handsome, but he was told a lot of times that he was—and mostly by other guys. He certainly worked with his share of openly gay directors, getting his start with Joel Schumacher ("The Client") and Bryan Singer ("Apt Pupil") and called he gay erotic director Bruce LaBruce his "Auntie Bruce."

Brad was comfortable around gay people, and he practically played his role as if he were seducing the older gay actor Ian McKellen in "Apt Pupil" in the disturbing story of a kid who finds a Nazi hiding in his neighborhood. He also played the hunky best friend to a boy dying of AIDS in "The Cure," and that close boyhood friendship was reprised in "Tom and Huck" as Huck Finn. He later makes out with a guy rather convincingly in "American Girl."

Brad's roles would find him in distinctly homoerotic settings, like an abusive juvenile detention center ("Sleepers"), or among horny freshman counselors at camp ("Happy Campers") and a macho street gang ("Deuces Wild").

His most bisexual role was perhaps as the vulgar kid in "Bully" based on a real murder case in Florida. His character's best friend, played by Nick Stahl, is an abusive bisexual, and Brad's character will do anything for him—and does, rather graphically. Brad once told me, "[Director] Larry Clark always wanted us to stand around in our underwear or be naked with the other guys, but I didn't care if it worked."

Brad never married, but after his death it was confirmed he had a child. Just before his death, he finished filming "The Informers," which like all Brett Easton Ellis stories, is filled with bisexual characters.

Remembering Suzanne Pleshette

Suzanne Pleshette was always a joy at the often-boring awards shows I had to cover in Hollywood over the past two decades. Toward the end, she was on the arm of comic actor Tom Poston, her third husband, and she always had a bawdy joke or juicy tidbit of old Hollywood history to tell.

The husky-voiced actress—most known for being Bob Newhart's wife in his first series, and in the surprising ending of his second series—also knew about the debates that many film scholars had about her seemingly bisexual character in Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film "The Birds."

Film historians have said that her sexy spinster schoolteacher character of Annie seems as much intrigued with newcomer-to-town, played by Tippi Hedren, as she does with her own ex-boyfriend played by Rod Taylor. The scene where she shares a cigarette with Tippi, who's bringing a pair of lovebirds to town, is simply smoking with sensual subtext.

Suzanne has played a nymphomaniac ("Rage to Live"), a famous homophobe ("Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean") and a stiff woman in "The Ugly Dachshund" who's more interested in her dogs than in her husband played by Dean Jones. "Ugly Dachshund" is a fish-out-of-water story where a large Great Dane adopts the daintiness of the dachshies he grew up with at home.

Toward the end of her life, she appeared three times on "Will & Grace" on TV as the mother to openly bisexual actress Megan Mullally (Karen on the show).

She married actor the closeted bisexual star Troy Donahue in 1964, but that only lasted eight months. Their mutual friend, Carol Channing, reportedly said about the wedding, "I'm sure she will be very happy, and so will Suzanne."

Remembering Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger was one of those actors who are unnervingly handsome, even when he's trying to be low-key and grungy. I interviewed him half a dozen times, beginning when no one knew who he was for "The Patriot" in 2000 and most recently in a room alone with him and Matt Damon for "Brothers Grimm."

Heath's roles seemed to be centered on portraying a man who may be considered a coward or a sissy at first, and then having to prove himself. That's his character in "Four Feathers" when his father considered him a coward, and in "Monster's Ball" where his father's name-calling led to the character's suicide. He played campy roles in "Casanova" and "A Knight's Tale" as a randy guy who was horny for anything that moves, and in "Candy" he'd do anything for a fix.

He talked about how his portrayal of the Australian hero "Ned Kelly" was a bit ambiguous with his sexuality. "There are some historians who have said that my character (Kelly) and Orlando (Bloom's character) were having some sort of a relationship, but we didn't play it that way. And yet, there was no evidence for the female love interest that was written into the script, either. Of course you could always see between the lines," he added with a wink.

Ledger's first break-out role was playing a gay cyclist in an Australian soap opera "Sweat" which takes place in an academy for young athletes. He later said he loved the soundtrack of Queen and David Bowie songs in "A Knight's Tale" and quipped about the homoeroticism of jousting with large lances.

But of course, his greatest role is that of the cowboy Ennis del Mar who happens to fall in love with another cowboy, Jack Twist in "Brokeback Mountain," earning him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Heath completely got it that it was too simple to call Ennis "just gay" and that sexuality was far more complicated.

"I don't think Ennis could be labeled as gay. Without Jack Twist, I don't know that he ever would have come out. I think the whole point was that it was two souls that fell in love with each other," Heath said. Later, when Internet rumors claimed that he and co-star Jake Gyllenhaal were actually bisexual in real life, he simply shrugged it off with a "so what?" He credited his live-and-let-live Australian upbringing with being nonjudgmental about other people's sexuality. (He was famous for his liaisons with actresses, and had a daughter with "Brokeback" actress Michelle Williams.)
Heath modeled his cowboy character after his real-life bisexual uncle, an Australian tough guy named Neil Bell, now in his 60s, and a friend to bisexual former porn star Paul Barresi, who has been releasing statements from Bell during the aftermath of Heath's death.
"He was a dear friend of mine," Heath said about his uncle. "He's a big guy, he gets into fights. . . . He was kicked out of the house at an early age because of his sexuality." Recently, in Newsweek, Heath was quoted about why some straight men get uncomfortable about two men together, saying, "I suspect it's a fear that they are going to enjoy it. They don't understand that you are not going to become sexually attracted to men by recognizing the beauty of a love story between two men."
Heath said, "I don't think it's that black-and-white, and I think because we label it so harshly, there's just a lot of confused people running around thinking, Oh, fuck, which side am I on?"

Ironically, many of the characters he portrayed in film—"Ned Kelly," "The Patriot," "Monster's Ball" died at an early age. Reports are that his role as the Joker in the upcoming "Dark Knight" Bat Man film is brilliant as a predatory creepy villain.

Sadly, though, he didn't get to do a movie biography of closeted actor Rock Hudson, who died of AIDS in 1985 and was married to a woman. He could have gone from playing a straight guy who has a gay relationship to a gay guy who hides behind a straight relationship. Chances are, he'd have played all his roles a bit bisexual anyway.

It's not without another bit of irony, perhaps, that Heath's career is compared a lot to that of bisexual icon Marlon Brando, and his early death is perhaps compared to this generation's James Dean.