The actor who played the "Joker" in "The Dark Knight" was found dead at his home eleven years ago.
The world of cinema and its fans could not believe it. Heath Ledger had been found dead in his New York apartment. His assistant found him face down and N- at the foot of his bed. Police found sleeping pills and other prescription antidepressant drugs in his room. There was no suicide note next to the actor's body. His family, who found out about his death from the news, claimed that Heath Ledger's death was due to an accident, a mixture of sleeping pills with other substances to reduce pain. A fatal recklessness.
Heath Ledger lived one of the best moments of his career. He had just finished shooting "The Dark Knight" and was in the middle of filming Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginary of Doctor Parnassus."
Heath Ledger was born in the Australian town of Perth on April 4, 1979. At the age of ten, he played Peter Pan in a school play and his older sister encouraged him to become an actor. His favorite actor was Gene Kelly because he liked to sing and dance a lot. In Australia he worked on several television series and in 1997 he made the leap to Hollywood. In the year 2000 we saw him playing the son of Mel Gibson in "The Patriot". Ledger always had a rebellious point that made him ideal for Gibson's impulsive and talkative son.
A year later we saw him as the protagonist in "A Knight's Tale" and later in "The Four Feathers" or "Casanova". In real life, Ledger himself was also a bit of a Casanova. He was the boyfriend of actresses like Heather Graham and Naomi Watts. In 2004 he met Michelle Williams while filming "Brokeback Mountain", a film for which he got his first Oscar nomination. With Michelle Williams, he had a daughter, Mathilda. It seemed that everything in his life was going well for him, but his relationship with Williams ended in 2007.
His role as Joker in "The Dark Knight" tormented him because he feared he would not live up to the one played by Jack Nicholson. The actor locked himself in a London hotel room for a whole month to prepare his character. He wrote a diary and tried different voices.
According to The New York Times, the intense preparation and hard shooting of this film had disturbed his sleep and the actor began taking sleeping pills. In addition, Ledger was quite stressed as he barely rested splicing one shoot after another, titles like "Candy" and "I'm not There" where he played Bob Dylan.
A few days before his death, he was seen walking with his daughter, dirty and scruffy. He had problems with Michelle Williams over custody of her daughter and he was dealing with media pressure quite badly. His friends and family advised him to stop his frantic pace, to take a break, and, above all, not to mix medications and substances without medical supervision. Her own sister spoke to him the night before she died and reminded him, but Ledger ignored her.
Heath Ledger left his parents and sisters as sole heirs since he drew up his will before meeting his former partner, Michelle Williams. Heath Ledger, despite his fame and his emerging career, was not a wealthy actor. He just owned a car and his New York house. He always thought that becoming a star had been a fluke. His family picked up the Oscar he won for his role as Joker in "The Dark Knight."
