On January 22, 2008, Australian actor Heath Ledger died of an accidental drug overdose at age 28. But that’s just the start of the story.
When Heath Ledger died inside his New York apartment on January 22, 2008, the world was left in shock. The handsome and talented Australian actor was just 28 years old — and he was at the pinnacle of his career. To his fans, he seemed to have it all. So what really happened on the day of Heath Ledger’s death?
Though Ledger was enjoying success in his professional life, his personal life was falling apart. Not only was he reportedly growing dependent on prescription drugs, he was also struggling with insomnia — sometimes sleeping just two hours per night. And his relationship with his beloved partner, Michelle Williams, had ended. Tragically, Ledger’s downward spiral would soon lead to his demise.
Officially, Heath Ledger’s cause of death was attributed to an accidental overdose. But his path to self-medication was complicated, dark, and misunderstood in the mainstream press.
This is the full story behind the death of Heath Ledger, and the promising career that preceded it.
Heath Ledger’s Early Years And Path To Stardom
TwitterHeath Ledger’s daughter was just two years old when he died.
Heath Andrew Ledger was born on April 4, 1979, in Perth, Australia, and from the start, he seemed destined to be a star. He was just 10 years old when he was cast in the lead role of Peter Pan at a local theater company. And there was nowhere to go but up.
While he was still in school, Ledger took small roles in a few Australian movies and television shows. By age 19, he had already made the leap to Los Angeles. Starring in the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You, Ledger quickly took Hollywood by storm. And from there, his star power only grew as he snagged roles in films like The Patriot, Monster’s Ball, and A Knight’s Tale.
Columbia PicturesHeath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale (2001).
By 2005, his star burned even brighter. Ledger’s performance as Ennis Del Mar in the groundbreaking film Brokeback Mountain demonstrated his skill as a serious actor — and stunned audiences and critics alike.
“Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character,” raved The New York Times. “It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn.”
Ledger would receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his role in Brokeback Mountain. At 26, he was one of the youngest actors ever nominated. Though Ledger lost the prize, he had already gained another.
Bruce Glikas/FilmMagicMichelle Williams and Heath Ledger at an after-party for Awake and Sing!
After meeting Michelle Williams on the set of the film, Ledger began a whirlwind relationship with her. The pair later found a place in Brooklyn, New York, and moved in together. They welcomed a daughter, Matilda Rose, in late 2005.
With a run of successful performances under his belt and a committed partner by his side, Heath Ledger seemed to be a budding superstar in the making. No one could have guessed that his days were numbered.
Ledger’s Life Reaches New Heights Personally And Professionally Before Things Begin To Fall Apart
Flickr/teadrinkerHeath Ledger with his young daughter Matilda, pictured shortly before his death.
Heath Ledger’s Oscar nomination for Brokeback Mountain was followed by a remarkable turn in I’m Not There — a movie inspired by Bob Dylan. Even more exciting, Ledger would soon portray the Joker in The Dark Knight.
But behind the scenes, things were far from rosy. By September 2007, Ledger’s relationship with Williams had come to an end. While Williams remained at the couple’s home in Brooklyn, Ledger had moved to Manhattan — where he’d become a favorite subject of New York tabloids.
Though these tabloids often portrayed him as a young, carefree actor who was enjoying parties and hooking up with models, the truth was far darker.
In a New York Times profile — published just a few months before he died — Heath Ledger opened up about the challenges that came with his acting career. Describing his role in I’m Not There, Ledger noted, “I stressed out a little too much,” and admitted that he wasn’t “proud” of his performance.
At the time of the interview, Ledger was in London, wrapping up The Dark Knight. And it was clear that playing the Joker — someone who Ledger described as “a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy” — could be draining for him.
Heath Ledger’s Joker Left An Indelible Mark In Movie History — But Took A Psychological Toll On Him
Warner Bros PicturesHeath Ledger as the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight.
It’s clear in any discussion about the role that Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight is widely considered to be one of the greatest depictions of the character, if not the greatest. Unfortunately, significant stress came along with the role, and the way Ledger immersed himself in the character was intense by any standard.
“I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary, and experimented with voices,” Ledger explained in another interview.
The work he put in certainly paid off. Ledger was given a posthumous Academy Award for his portrayal, but given that the Joker actor died before the film was even released, rumors swirled that his time spent in the mind of the Joker could have contributed to his suicide. His fellow actors and director Christopher Nolan also frequently noted Ledger’s commitment to the role.
“We’re treating this as serious drama,” Christian Bale told The Hollywood Reporter around the time of the film’s release. “You go into character and you stay in the character. I love that. I find that so ridiculous that I love it, and I take that very seriously. Heath was definitely embracing that.”
But if you look at who Ledger channeled to create his version of the Joker, it starts to make sense why it took such a toll on him. Previous Jokers, such as Jack Nicholson’s portrayal in Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), had a bit more camp to them, playing off of gangster and jester archetypes. Ledger obviously took a different approach.
“Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, these kinds of punk influences were some of the things we talked about,” Nolan said. “We also talked about the character of Alex in A Clockwork Orange. He’s very anarchic and yet somehow has great charisma, both in the book and in the film… It was an interesting balance, editing the performance, because he has all kinds of interesting facets, all kinds of mannerism and things… I read them as genuinely part of the fabric of a real human being.”
Warner Bros PicturesLedger said in an interview that he was excited to give a “fresh interpretation” of the Joker for Nolan’s film.
In the midst of his intense prep work, though, Ledger’s insomnia — which he was already struggling with — seemed to get worse and worse.
“Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” Ledger told The New York Times. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.” He went on to describe a night when, desperate for sleep, he took an Ambien. When it didn’t work, Ledger took another — only to wake up an hour later with his mind still racing.
Ledger’s friend and dialect coach Gerry Grennell, who lived with the actor during the final weeks of his life, witnessed the actor’s insomnia firsthand. “I would hear him wandering around the apartment and I’d get up and say, ‘Come on, man, get back to bed, you have to work tomorrow,’” Grennell remembered. “He said, ‘I can’t sleep, man.’”
What Happened To Heath Ledger In The Final Days Before His Death?
Jack Ludlam/Alamy Stock PhotoOne of the last photographs taken of Heath Ledger.
On the set of his next film, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Ledger was in such rough shape that his concerned cast-mates claimed that he had a case of “walking pneumonia.” He continued to struggle with sleep — and attempted to self-medicate just to get some rest.
Grennell said Ledger was also having a tough time dealing with the end of his relationship with Williams: “He missed his girl, he missed his family, he missed his little girl — he desperately wanted to see her and hold her and play with her. He was desperately unhappy, desperately sad.”
Unsurprisingly, Ledger’s family was concerned about him. Ledger’s father later revealed, “His sister was on the phone to him the night before telling him not to take the prescription medications with the sleeping tablets. He said, ‘Katie, Katie, I’m fine. I know what I’m doing.’”
On January 22, 2008, Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York apartment.
GTCRFOTO/Alamy Stock PhotoParamedics loading Heath Ledger’s body into the back of a van shortly after receiving a call that he had died.
His housekeeper reportedly thought he was just sleeping late — since she heard him snoring at 12:30 p.m. But when his masseuse arrived at 2:45 p.m. for an appointment, Ledger did not respond to knocks on his bedroom door.
His housekeeper and masseuse pushed open the door — and found Ledger unconscious and naked on the floor. According to police, neither of them could revive him, so they called for help.
Nearby was a copy of a script Ledger had been working on with director Stephen Gaghan, an adaptation of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. The script also had Gaghan’s phone number scrawled on it, which led to a devastating phone call for the director.
“I’m in an airport with my wife, just going from one place to another, and I literally just collapse,” Gaghan told Gladwell on the latter’s podcast series Development Hell, “never happened to me before or since. My feet went out from under me.
“I just literally sat down because I was like, ‘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 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… It was just really, really sad.”
At that point, though, it was already too late.
Heath Ledger died at the age of 28.
