In 2008, Heath Ledger was at the peak of his career when he overdosed on a cocktail of prescription pills. In 2005 he was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, in 2007 he was one of seven actors to portray Bob Dylan in the award-winning I’m Not There, and of course there was his upcoming Interpretation of the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight”. A role that would bring him widespread recognition and even greater fame. It is recognition and fame that he should no longer experience.
Ledger was an Australian child actor who first came to Hollywood audiences in the 1999 teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. He later gave up more teen comedies and was rewarded with a big break when he played the role of Mel Gibson’s son in the drama “The Patriot” (2000). After appearing in the positively reviewed Monster’s Ball (2001), Ledger starred in two flops, Knight of Passion (2001) and The Four Feathers (2002). In 2005 he fought his way back. In just one year, he played the lead roles in no less than four films, including “Casanova” – and “Brokeback Mountain.”
Sleepless
Months before his death, while working on his final appearance in The Cabinet of Doctor Parnassus, Ledger suffered from what some of his colleagues and friends called “walking pneumonia” designated. He had a lot of trouble sleeping, so he mixed sleeping pills with other prescription medications. He did it in a desperate attempt to find some peace in the hustle and bustle of his life. He was not aware of how much he was walking on the edge of the abyss.
The pills didn’t help. Ledger’s boyfriend Gerry Grennell lived with him for a while in recent months, and told People Magazine about the days they spent together:
“I heard him wandering around the apartment. I got up and said, ‘Come on man, go back to bed, you have to work tomorrow.’ He just replied: ‘I can’t sleep.'”
The downward spiral in Ledger’s life had begun months earlier when his partner and mother of his then two-year-old daughter, Michelle Williams, ended their relationship. She threw him outside the door of their shared house in Brooklyn because, according to reports, she could no longer cope with his lifestyle, which increasingly included drugs.
For the Joker to the limit
After their breakup, Heath Ledger moved into an apartment in Manhattan. The same apartment where he would die a few months later. When he moved, Ledger was working on what would become arguably the biggest role of his career. The Joker in The Dark Knight. His immersion in the role and his almost insane commitment to the character cost him a lot of physical and mental strength. Something Joaquin Phoenix also went through years later for the same role. Phoenix, who received a lot of praise for his interpretation of the Joker, didn’t forget who he had to remind him of.
At the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG), Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor and thanked Heath Ledger. First, Phoenix honored Leonardo DiCaprio (“an inspiration of the past 25 years”) and Adam Driver (“You moved me deeply”). Then he talked about Ledger: “In fact, I owe this to the work of my favorite actor, Heath Ledger.” (“Really, I’m standing here on the shoulders of my favorite actor, Heath Ledger”).
Back then, Ledger wanted his performance to be unpredictable. To familiarize himself with the Joker, the 28-year-old locked himself in a hotel room for a month and used a diary to make notes about his role as a psychopathic criminal and Batman’s adversary. Excerpts from this diary can be seen in the documentary “Too Young to Die: Heath Ledger, Darling of the Gods” (2013).
Heath Ledger’s Joker Diary: “Hard to Read”
A clip that went viral online shows Ledger’s father Kim leafing through the Joker diary. You see clown masks and wild notes. There’s a big one on the last page “BYE BYE”. His father said: “It was hard to read.” In 2007, Heath Ledger commented on his preparation and told of the development: “I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, isolating myself from the outside world, keeping a diary and experimenting with voices and laughter. I ended up more in the realm of a psychopath – someone with very little to no conscience. The Joker is just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown.” Christopher Nolan said of his performance:
“A lot of what Heath did he discussed with me. He gave me hints about what he was up to. We talked about it a little bit and I tried to give him an addressee, a kind of gauge for what he was doing. But a lot of it had to do with unpredictability, and I think he didn’t want to reveal his cards too much.”
Worried about Heath Ledger
During the filming of The Dark Knight, Ledger’s illness and insomnia worsened. People close to him began to become increasingly concerned about the psychological state of their friend, son and brother. However, his sister Kate, with whom Heath Ledger had a close relationship, does not believe that this role was decisive in his death:
“Honestly, it was the complete opposite. He had an amazing sense of humor and I guess only his close family and friends really knew that. But he had fun. He wasn’t depressed about the Joker.”
Kate was one of the last people to speak to Heath Ledger. They spoke on the phone the night before he was found dead after a combination of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam and doxylamine. She said he didn’t have any noticeable signs of during the conversation depressions shown. She also found no direct evidence of a suicide risk.
Not suicide
As is usual with a tragedy like this, there will probably always be speculation about the overdose that Heath Ledger succumbed to. Soon after his death was announced, all sorts of rumors, hypotheses and theories began circulating about how the overdose could have occurred. Was it intentional or an accident? Most of those around him were certain that Ledger did not intentionally take his own life. His father blames his son for his own death, but doesn’t believe it was suicide:
“It was entirely his fault. It wasn’t anyone else’s – he reached for them [den Pillen]. He took her. You can’t blame anyone else in this situation. This is hard to accept because I loved him so much and was so proud of him. His sister called him the night before and told him not to take the prescription medication along with the sleeping pills. He said, ‘Katie, Katie, I’m fine. I know what I am doing.’ He had no idea.”
Ledger’s father spent the last decade warning people about the dangers of prescription pills. What drives him is to save other families from the pain that he and the rest of the Ledgers experienced when their famous member fell victim to the means.
The legacy
Today, more than a decade after his death, Heath Ledger’s legacy still looms large. He won a posthumous Oscar for his widely celebrated portrayal of the Joker, and his other roles and personifications have always been considered highlights in cinema history. The legacy of his overdose also lives on in a tragic form in his father’s work. On the other hand, she significantly changed the lives of Michelle Williams and their daughter. Williams appears to have found peace with his tragic death, although she may never fully understand it. In one Interview with Vanity Fair she said:
“In a strange way, I miss this year because all the opportunities that existed back then have disappeared. It didn’t seem unlikely to me that he would walk through a door or appear from behind a bush. It’s been a year of very magical thinking, and in some ways I’m sad to see myself moving further and further away from it. […] I found meaning in the circumstances around it, but the actual event itself… I can’t find meaning in it.”
Shortly after Ledger’s housekeeper discovered the body on January 22, 2008, emergency medical personnel arrived and began resuscitation measures. Vain. Media speculation about his possible illegal drug use increased over the next two weeks until, on February 8, 2008, the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office released the results of toxicology tests conducted on the body. The report said he was on an accidental one “Misuse of prescription drugs” died. After memorial services in New York and Los Angeles, Heath Ledger’s family brought his body back to their native Australia, where he is buried next to his grandparents in his hometown.