Tom said:

And that's all it will be for a while. We may never know what really happened.

what!?!?!?! Oh man that is terrible!

I'm having trouble believing this was intentional, something is off about this. I thinking it was an accidental overdose.

fuck.....this ain't right!

Oh no. Thats too bad. He was really young.

statuesqque said:

Nobody knows yet, but I dont know what you mean by something is "off" about this.

sosgemini said:

Definitely, just like the Lacy Peterson thing. Men probably kill their wives every day and nobody (outside of their families & friends) cares because there are no cute photos of them/they're too poor to rally up media coverage!

But Lovemachine said this was "much less tragic" because it was suicide and I don't see how.

The report I just read says "naked in bed with sleeping pills nearby" so I guess they wouldn't know yet if those were even the cause?

NDRU said:

lovemachine probably meant it was his choice 2 take his own life,so in a way he must hav bin deeply upset about something and couldnt bear 2 live so hes decided 2 hes had enough of this shit world and went with god(well i pray he has) it may be less tragic but it dont make it less upsetting(well not 4 me anyway)

wow...

I never saw any of his movies. I think it is really sad that he died at 28 with a waiting life ahead.

Death is always such sad reality. Everyone else is left with what ifs and what could have been. Their tomorrow is gone.
[Edited 1/22/08 17:38pm]

optimus said:

Nope. That's not his style. Any excuse to shit on someone's parade. Now THAT's his style!

optimus said:

well, depends on your perspective. I mean it's tragic for not for him but for those who loved him. To think maybe somebody could have done something (which they always do think about suicide and not necessarily about cancer) would drive those close to him nuts.

Also tragic to feel bad enough to kill yourself. But some people don't really feel bad for those who commit suicide.

Whatever, I am not affected since I didn't know him, but it's sad that a young life was ended.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

oh well i tried

Right after Brad Renfro too. Brad's story is kinda creepy because the coroner reported that he had a fresh tattoo reading "Fuck All Y'all".

AnckSuNamun said:

Cinnie said:

money well spent, huh?

Cinnie said:

A full back piece at that.

What I am hearing is that somewhere during the filming of The Dark Knight,(Batman) he had trouble sleeping. He had a hard time playing the character of the Joker. Will look 4 facts on this now.

I got a message in my Yahoo mailbox so I went to Yahoo!mail. that was on the front page and I was

I couldn't believe it. I'm not big on Heath Ledger, but I liked him in A Knight's Tale and The Patriot... the last ive heard anything about him was when he starred in Brokeback mountain.

So when i saw the headline, I had to process it. I wasn't overly upset, but I was shocked. You think you know someone and something like this happens. It's a sad loss for Hollywood.

RIP Heath

Found info on his sleeping trouble: http://www.bloomberg.com/...=australia

In an interview published two days ago, he told the U.K. Sunday Express that movie-goers would find his Joker to be ``an out-of- control psychopath, sociopath, cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown.''

Ledger said the role wore him down. ``Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,'' he told the Times in a story published in November. ``I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.''

He added that an Ambien sleeping pill failed to help, so he took a second one, only to awaken an hour later, his mind still racing....


I am gonna go with the benefit of the doubt that this might have been an accidental overdose. He returned from London on Monday and might not have slept for days. Thinking maybe a handful of pills would let him sleep better. Making an assumption....but might not be too far-fetched.
[Edited 1/22/08 17:42pm]

july said:

1979 - 2008

Oh geez

LleeLlee said:

The suicide angle or the approach being taken in the reporting of it. In how they're slightly feeding the impression or as previously mentioned digging for a juicy suicide story in this is what I meant.

jseven said:

I agree. Don't underestimate sleep deprivation.

jseven said:

id also read that. what i recall is heath said something to the effect that the character of the joker had such a demonic aspect to it that the role greatly affected him and caused him to not sleep well.

pictures of heath from recent months show him looking decidedly wan and unkempt. there are reports he was turning down offers of work. in retrospect, it seems to me there were observable outward signs that this young man was struggling with something serious.

Heath Ledger: Star in Distress

By BELINDA LUSCOMBE Time Magazine

Even with his big face and chiseled jaw, Heath Ledger was one of those guys who blended in easily. In November 2005, waiting for me outside a pub, as he would have called it, he looked like any other scruffy Brooklyn local. He was then a little bleary eyed from being a new father, but also a little wary of the press from being a heartthrob. We were meeting to discuss what would be his Oscar-nominated performance in Brokeback Mountain. We went to a local cafe. He didn't eat.

He was what we call in Australia a bloke, a guy who could rough it and wasn’t given much to talking. But his masculinity framed an urgent sensitivity: He had his mom's, sister's and two half-sisters' first initials tattooed in Gothic letters on his wrist. He gave off the air of being willing to punch someone but only if it would mask his own pain. Because of this combination of machismo and sensitivity, like a more handsome Russell Crowe, he was in demand. He just wasn’t sure that he wanted to be. "Heath," a studio boss once told me, "needs to decide who he really wants to be."

He won't have to, now that he has been found dead in an Manhattan apartment, at the unbearably young age of 28. It's tempting to look for signs of a melancholy temperament in our brief meeting, an interview for a story in TIME. But mostly what he gave off was dissatisfaction.

Ledger was very serious about his work, trying to forge a path like that of Sean Penn or Jack Nicholson, trying to walk the line between what the studios wanted him to be (a romantic hero such as those he played in 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale, his first two big hits) and the more renegade figures he was drawn to (Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, the iconic Australia outlaw in Ned Kelly or the junkie in Candy). "I wanted to scrub it all away," he said of his early forays into stardom, "and start again, to see what my abilities are, if there are any." He was hard on himself and on his performances, but wounded by criticism from others. Of the publicity for his role in A Knight's Tale, he told me, "They put my face on a poster with 'He Will Rock You' written underneath it, which I certainly didn't think I was going to.. and what if I didn't?" He added, "That freaked me the f--- up. That's where I really felt like my destiny was in somebody else's hands, and it was all being masterminded." The role in Brokeback, a sheep rancher trying to come to terms with his homosexuality, attracted him because of its complexity — and because it contrasted with his Hollywood "image." "It was going to be a challenge," he told me, "It was going to be one of those roles ... I would have to mature as a person and mature as an actor in order to tell."

Born in 1979 in Perth, Australia, he told me that he grew up playing hockey with his dad and his sisters. And his heroes were musicians. "Kurt Cobain and Bono," he said. "I guess they were about the only heroes I really had. I wasn't raised on movies." He moved to Los Angeles at the age of 19, and fame came very quickly, including a big break in the 2000 movie The Patriot co-starring fellow Aussie Mel Gibson. Celebrity had its discontents, though he found solace with the actress Michelle Williams and their daughter Matilda. But he complained about the scrutiny and the pervasiveness of the paparazzi. "They talk to you, they taunt you, they try to get you to react... and you just gotta keep walking and it's embarrassing."

Since Brokeback, he had been having general career success but personal distress. He had separated from Williams and had moved out of their sunny yellow Brooklyn home. At the same time he was receiving accolades for his performance in the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There and had completed filming his role as the Joker (a character Nicholson immortalized) in the new Batman movie The Dark Knight, a potential blockbuster. At the news of Ledger's death, Mel Gibson said, "I had such great hope for him. He was just taking off, and to lose his life at such a young age is a tragic loss." Ledger leaves behind a career of great promise, a too small body of films and the sense that he never admired his work as much as others did."

july said:

I will probably watch his movies someday. It is really sad when an artist dies and then their work
is more studied and validated to some extent. I guess it's because they will not create any more art.

sosgemini said:

You're right.

I have to admit, my first thought upon hearing about this was "Oh shit. Did they finish filming? I give a fuck one way or the other about celebrity culture. I'm not even certain Heath was a great actor. The only thing ever I saw him in was Brokeback, which was a good film, but I didn't watch it and immediately promote Ledger into the Depp/Nicholson/DeNiro sphere.

I'm seeing a lot of Curt Cobain parallels here. A young talent with a few good tunes under his belt who dies before his time, on the precipice of greatness, and whose talent will always be overstated and overrated because now he's a good looking martyr. "Nevermind"...."Brokeback Mountain"...and now "The Dark Knight" will be now be Heath Ledger's "Unplugged". This film will make MILLIONS, whether it's any good or not (and I suspect it will be VERY good) only because he died. It would've been huge anyhow, and maybe even have catapulted Ledger into super-stardom, but now, because he DIED, everyone will flock to his work, canonize it and go on and on about it and him. If Brandon Routh had died before "Superman Returns" came out (a pretty mediocre movie), we'd all be falling all over ourselves talking about how great an actor he was...Same goes for Christian Bale, and even his resume is larger.

I hate to say it, but to be honest, the only reason I'm as invested in this news as I should be is because the Dark Knight looks so kick ass. I never even knew then name "Heath Ledger" until they cast him as the Joker. Now he's a Household name. I think that's what the person who said "People die every day" was driving at. Suzzane Pleschette died last weekend, and I didn't see a thread about her.

I'm just sayin...
[Edited 1/22/08 18:03pm]

Some members of the press, during recent interviews, did notice him looking skinnier than usual and how he would be jittery and did make remarks off-record of his hygene. He and friends said that was the effects of the role had on him.

You hear of actors all the time like say Jim Carrey where they become that character they are playing and refuse to leave the character even off camera where they demand to be called that character. He wanted to go to interviews on Leno as Andy Kaufman when "Man On The Moon" was released.

I think Ledger was a far better actor than Carrey, just using him as an example.
[Edited 1/22/08 18:04pm]