Heath Ledger Obituary

Heath Ledger Obituary in the Toronto Star:



The shocking facts are these: just 28 years old, a respected young actor with one Oscar nomination already under his belt, found dead, naked, face down at the foot of the bed in a Manhattan apartment with sleeping pills nearby.

If it was personal demons that conspired to destroy Heath Ledger – police said yesterday there was no obvious indication of suicide – they were already making their presence felt many years before.

During an interview in 2002 at the Toronto International Film Festival, Ledger seemed so uneasy before the premiere of his film, The Four Feathers, that he stopped an interview at one point, asked the reporter to turn off the tape recorder and said, "Sorry, mate, but sometimes it all gets a bit too much."

Yesterday afternoon, the news emerged that he had been found dead by his housekeeper, who was waiting to admit a masseuse.

An autopsy was planned for today, but police said the death was a possible drug overdose.

Ledger told The New York Times in a November interview that he "stressed out a little too much" during the filming of I'm Not There, in which he was one of six actors playing Bob Dylan, and had trouble sleeping while portraying the Joker, whom he called a "psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy" in the Batman flick The Dark Knight, which recently finished filming.

"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," Ledger told the Times. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted and my mind was still going." He said he took two Ambien pills, which only worked for an hour.

In 2006, the Star's Peter Howell asked Ledger if he'd ever had any experience with drugs.

"Yeah, but not heroin," replied Ledger instantly. "Not heavy drugs like that. I've smoked pot and I know what it's like to be high."

Ledger's life was a strange mixture of the charmed and the damned from the beginning.

Born in Australia in 1979, he came from a family that included himself and three sisters. When his parents divorced acrimoniously when Ledger was 10, he never forgot it.

Years later, during that 2002 interview, he sported a tattooed bracelet with the letters KAOS that stood for the names of his mother and sisters. His father's name was nowhere in evidence.

When asked about that, Ledger hit one of his legendary flashpoints and said, "You're wondering if I have problems with my dad? No way. I love him."

Ledger admitted he'd come to realize "how much I'm like him" and when asked in what way, admitted sheepishly, "We both like to party."

Early successes in Australian films led to him being cast in the American teen flick 10 Things I Hate About You, followed by Mel Gibson's The Patriot.

Movies like A Knight's Tale and The Four Feathers made him even more of a teen heartthrob, but already there was media gossip that he liked to party too hard and was becoming a production liability.

Director Ang Lee ignored all those rumours and cast Ledger opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain, where he gave an astonishingly sensitive performance. It made you wonder what he had tapped into to find those feelings and something he said in 2002 suddenly acquired new meaning.

"I've been trying to get a better idea of who I am by studying my parents," he said then. "After all, they're the blueprints, aren't they?"

During a 2005 interview about Brokeback Mountain, Ledger was massively different, but not always for the good. His self-destructive energy was gone, but much of his youthful sparkle had also vanished. There was sadness behind his eyes.

He insisted that "I'm a huge fan of love; I've investigated it thoroughly all my life and will continue to," pointing to his ongoing relationship with his Brokeback co-star, Michelle Williams, and the incipient birth of their daughter Matilda.

But what made more sense was his description of Ennis, the character he played in Brokeback.

"He doesn't know how to love, how to express himself. His genetic structure and years of family tradition are deeply imbedded in him. That's his biggest battle and it gets the better of him."

In recent months, Ledger had broken up with Williams and his public profile had grown increasingly dark and troubled.

We may never know what went though his mind in his final hours, but something he said during that 2002 interview comes back as a haunting memory.

"There are times, mate," he confessed, "when I don't have the slightest idea of what it all means and that scares me to death."