Why I won't worship at the shrine to a cowboy

On Tuesday evening, chatting about actors to somebody I'd never met before, I said the only one I really knew was Clint Eastwood. She seemed surprised and impressed. I had to explain that what I meant was not that he was a pal but that he was about the only actor I could be reasonably sure of recognising.

Later that night, a friend texted: "Did u hear abt heath ledger?" In every possible sense, I hadn't. Who could he be? What could have happened to whoever he was?

Now we all know. Even me. He was a 28-year-old actor who starred in the ludicrous tearjerker Brokeback Mountain and also in I'm Not There, the pretentious Bob Dylan fantasia. I've seen both these movies and so must have spent some time looking at Heath Ledger without, however, taking any particular impression.

In death, he's been glorified. He was a legend cut down in his prime, the critics lamented. He burned the candle at both ends, making a "beau-tiful flame", testified his ex's dad. "There's something especially poignant about such a life being curtailed so early. Ledger, like James Dean and River Phoenix before him, will stay forever young," pronounced celebrity-hound David Gritten.

To an extraordinary extent, Hollywood stars still lead celebrity culture, despite the competition supplied by TV, pop, sports and, latterly, reality shows. The transaction here is pretty simple. Fans feel they know the star. They don't. So they become endlessly hungry for every detail of the star's life that helps maintain their delusion.

There's a reality slippage here. Perhaps it doesn't really do any great harm to its dupes, although in the long term it must inevitably generate loneliness for anyone to invest too much affection in a love-object who does not know of your existence.

And then again, perhaps the cult of celebrity can sometimes directly harm the vulnerable. It seems the teenagers who have committed suicide in Bridgend may have sought internet fame - in the form of tribute websites presenting such pitiful postings as "Love you loads your a star && always well be 4eva xx". That's just David Gritten's Heath Ledger tribute transferred to txt.

Adulation is not always misplaced. Artists can be rightly revered. But to admire actors for anything other than their acting is just a category error, a painfully common one. Actors are endlessly interviewed but they never have anything to say. Why be surprised? Their job is to speak what's written by others and act as directed. The only possible way of stirring interest is to muddle up their roles and their real lives - a muddle Heath Ledger appears to have embraced, incidentally, since he fell for the actress who played his wife in Brokeback Mountain and had a child with her before separating.

Let's resolve: when not actually acting, actors should be politely ignored. Better for us, better for them. Too late for Mr Ledger, though.