The Dark Knight star was found dead in his New York City apartment in 2008.
A friend of Heath Ledger has disclosed fresh information about the night the much-loved Australian actor tragically died.
Ledger was found unresponsive in his Brooklyn apartment on January 22nd 2008 at just 28 years old. At the time, an inquest found he had died from an accidental overdose of prescribed sleeping medication.
Sixteen years on, Stephen Gaghan, a well-known writer and director revealed that Ledger died with a script for a film he was planning to direct, next to him in his bed.
Gaghan, an Oscar winner with many years of Hollywood experience, had been working on a screen adaptation of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, and was going to cast the 10 Things I Hate About You star as the lead.
He added that Gladwell’s book was also discovered on Ledger’s bedside table.
Ledger was at the latter stages of filming his final movie at the time of his death, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which was released the following year.
He is said to have been going through a particularly difficult spell in his personal life, having split from his longterm partner Michelle Williams the previous year, whom he shared daughter Matilda with.
Speaking on Malcolm Gladwell’s Development Hell podcast he was informed of the bedside details by Ledger’s dad, Kim, who called him when he arrived at his Manhattan apartment with a close friend after being notified of his son’s death.
He told the well-known author: “They were there with the body and our script was in bed with him, and your book was on the bedside table. I think my number was on the script, like written. These guys, as you can imagine, they are in shock and they dialled that number and I don’t know why.
“I’m in an airport with my wife [Minnie Mortimer] just going from one place to another, and I literally just collapse, never happened to me before or since. My feet went out from under me. I just literally sat down because I was like, what, what?
“The emotion, what they were going through, I should not have been a party to in any way really, and yet as a human or as somebody who just cares, I just was there and I was listening and my wife was looking at me. I remember her face and I was just like, I was speechless. I just listened and listened and listened. It was just really, really sad. And it’s still sad.”
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