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How Heath Ledger’s Death Changed the Music Industry and What People Remember About Him
Heath Ledger was at the peak of his acting career when he passed.
Heath Ledger was a versatile actor, rocking roles from the 1999 romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You
to the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain. After his death, he even won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his haunting and jittery role as the Joker in the 2008 movie The Dark Knight.
On Jan. 22, 2008 — half a year before the release of The Dark Knight— it was confirmed that Ledger died because of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills along with other prescription drugs.
When Ledger died he was no longer living with actress Michelle Williams. The two had a daughter, Matilda. It is heartbreaking to know that only after a few years of his demise, his family, friends and fans have kept his memory alive.
If you want to know about Heath Ledger’s death and the legacy that he left behind, here is the complete story.
The Cause of Heath Ledger’s Death
Heath Ledger was declared dead at 3:36 p.m. on Jan. 22, 2008, according to The New York Times. His death, essentially, is a result of an overdose where he succumbed to the combined effect of several prescription drug intoxications.
“Mr. Heath Ledger died as a result of acute intoxication from the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine,” said a statement by Ellen Borakove, a representative for the Chief Medical Examiner. “We have determined that the mode of death is accident, drug abuse of prescription medications.”
In the period which preceded his death, Ledger was in a state of both physical and emotional turmoil. His friend and dialect coach, Gerry Grennell said to PEOPLE that the actor was suffering from exhaustion and long-lasting pneumonia-like symptoms.
“He missed his family, he missed his daughter — he wanted to see her so badly, to hold her and play with her… He was very unhappy, very sad,” Grennell quoted. He also pointed out that Ledger had told him that he wanted to quit the pills, reportedly saying, “I’m not well, it’s upsetting me even more.”
Who Did Heath Ledger Speak to Before He Died?
Heath Ledger was in touch with a few persons before he died, such as his sister Kate, and his closest friend and director Matt Amato.
Kate told PEOPLE in April 2017 that she had kept on warning him in the weeks before about the risk of mixing medications.
“I simply told him, ‘Mixing things you have got to be very careful,’ and he was like, ‘Katie, hello, come on, of course,'”
“I was at the point of dinner… and we were joking. Then he said, ‘I must go now, and I will call you at 8:30 in the morning,’ and that was it… I said, ‘Ok, I love you.’ And that was it. It’s distressing,” she said.
Ledger also had a fun exchange with Amato, whom he often talked with on iChat, on the day of his death.
“We would usually communicate on iChat two or three times a day,” Amato told PEOPLE, “so the last thing he said was, ‘I am going out to buy some cigs.’ I said ‘figs,’ ”
Their running joke was making intentionally bad puns, Amato explained. “He said cigs and I said figs and that was it.”
Moreover, according to Entertainment Weekly, Ledger was going to talk the next day with director Steven Spielberg regarding the candidacy for Thomas Hayden in The Chicago 7.
What Was the Sequence of Events on the Day Heath Ledger Died?
Heath Ledger was living in a New York apartment while filming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, at the time of his death. On Jan. 22, 2008, Diana Wolozin, who was Ledger’s housekeeper and masseuse, came over his apartment and found that he was not waking up.
“She waited [outside his room] and tried calling him [on his cell phone] and he did not answer,” a police confidential source told PEOPLE. “She entered the room. She started preparing the massage table and he wasn’t waking up — wasn’t responding.”
The source further said that when Wolozin tried to wake Ledger by shaking him and he still didn’t respond, she took the initiative to call Mary‑Kate Olsen by using the speed dial on his phone. While Olsen got in touch with private security in New York City, Wolozin immediately dialed 911. The paramedics were there within a few minutes.
Did Heath Ledger’s Role as the Joker Affect Him Off‑Screen?
Heath Ledger was pretty much known for immersing himself totally in his roles, and his preparation for The Dark Knight was on a completely different level. To get the Joker’s creepy, Joker-like personality just right, Ledger pretty much locked himself away for weeks and wrote a diary as if he was the character.
Such deeply staying in character was not something new for him. In fact, working on Lords of Dogtown in 2005, Catherine Hardwicke, his director saw his process being so demanding. “Part of it is being an actor and getting so deep in your characters and trying to figure out your life,” she told PEOPLE. During the Brokeback Mountain awards season, she remembered Ledger telling her he wanted to “move away to Holland and ride bicycles for a year — get away from all this craziness.”
While playing the Joker, Ledger had trouble sleeping and therefore had to use sleeping pills. He told The New York Times that he was sleeping only about two hours a night after describing the character as “a psychopathic, mass‑murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.” “I couldn’t stop thinking,” he said. “My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.”
According to a source that saw Ledger around one week prior to his death, he looked physically very tired. “He didn’t look like himself,” the source said, explaining that he blamed the toll coming from constant travel, filming, and his separation from Michelle Williams and their daughter.
Public Reaction to Heath Ledger’s Death
Fans flooded the streets outside Heath Ledger’s Manhattan apartment and at the Brooklyn residence Michelle Williams and he had shared the moment the news of his death broke.
The news of his death came as a shock not only to the public but also to the film industry. Gary Oldman who portrayed Commissioner James Gordon whom Ledger played in The Dark Knight, told PEOPLE he remembered the actor as a nice person and a loving father.
“[Ledger] would sit on the curbside …laugh and talk about his daughter Matilda [Rose],” Oldman recounted. “I thought he was just a beautiful kid. I thought he was just wonderful. I had a real affection for him.”
Michelle Williams Pays Tribute to Heath Ledger Through Their Daughter Matilda
Daniel Day‑Lewis honored Heath Ledger by thanking the late actor in his 2008 Screen Actors Guild Award acceptance speech for There Will Be Blood. Day‑Lewis mentioned that he took inspiration from Heath debut in Brokeback Mountain and his performance in Monster’s Ball.
A day or two after Ledger’s death, Michelle Williams made a very personal public statement about their daughter and her sorrow.
“I am utterly heartbroken,” said Williams. “I have a daughter who is the most tender-hearted, lively, gorgeous little girl of whom the world is not worthy, and that little girl is her father’s clone. All that I can hold on to is the fact that his presence lives with her and that this becomes visible every day.”
In her statement, she explained, “His family and I see Matilda as she behaves like a forest fairy, cuddles the animals and running up the stairs two steps at a time, and we feel the presence of him with us … He will live through Matilda in the best of our thoughts.”
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What Is Heath Ledger’s Legacy?
Heath Ledger is recognized by both fans and peers as a unique, innovative actor who had the ability to vanish completely in the characters he portrayed.
His films include a wide array of characters such as the adorable and romantic teenager Patrick in 10 Things I Hate About You, squire William in A Knight’s Tale, and his Oscar-winning role as cowboy Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain. Nevertheless, the public still most associates Ledger with the Joker, the anarchic clown he played in The Dark Knight, a role that immortalized him in the pantheon of legendary actors.
In addition to his work and daughter, Matilda-led legacy, Heath Ledger’s influence is still alive through the Australians in Film Heath Ledger Scholarship, which supports Australian actors transitioning to Hollywood.
His sister Kate elaborated on the scholarship’s purpose to PEOPLE in April 2017. “It’s a resource for Australian actors who are looking to expand their careers internationally, a sort of network to establish them in Hollywood and provide them with support and assistance,” she told PEOPLE. “From industry introduction to managing finances to providing airfares back and forth to Australia, we aim to provide the complete transitional package.”
