On January 22, 2008, the Australian actor Heath Ledger was found dead on his bed at his apartment in SoHo, a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City.
The medical technicians who were called to the scene administered CPR and tried using a cardiac defibrillator but it was not enough. Heath Ledger was pronounced dead at 3:45 p.m. Eastern Time. A spokesperson for the New York Police Department said foul play was not suspected and prescription medications were found near his body.
His family and friends were in shock and were awaiting further information from the postmortem conducted by the New York coroner’s office. Many fans wanted to know for certain if his death was due to an accidental overdose or a suicide.
The New York City medical examiner’s findings from the autopsy concluded that the actor died of acute intoxication from an accidental drug overdose caused by six different medications including oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam (brand name: Valium), temazepam (brand name: Restoril), alprazolam (brand name: Xanax), and doxylamine and did not commit suicide. The body was discovered by a masseuse, Diana Wolozin, who called his girlfriend, Mary-Kate Olsen, before calling 911. Heath Ledger had completed principal photography for his role as the Joker in the movie ‘The Dark Knight’ several months before his death.
He had previously told family members he had been taking psychiatric medications. There was no reason to believe that he had been self-medicating. Further, a search of the apartment by Police revealed six types of prescription drugs prescribed by doctors in Ledger’s lower Manhattan apartment.
At the time of his death, Heath Ledger was not finished filming his role in the movie ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ which meant that Heath Ledger had many unfinished scenes that left the film’s producers and director, Terry Gilliam, in a real dilemma. Several months later, the film’s director decided to hire three different actors, Jude Law, Johnny Depp, and Colin Farrell, to complete Heath Ledger’s unfinished scenes.
Diana Wolozin, a massage therapist who was to give Heath Ledger a massage that afternoon, arrived at his SoHo loft just before 3 p.m. Eastern Time on January 22, 2008. Wolozin said she knocked on the door and called his cell phone but got no response both times. So she let herself in with his key. She touched his body and found that it was cold. She tried to wake him but he did not respond to her attempts to wake him.
Heath Ledger’s last interview was in the fall of 2007. Ledger talked about how he prepared for his role as the Joker by studying tapes of people with mental disorders while taking note of their mannerisms.
He also opened up about how he’s been struggling with insomnia for years. The reason is that his mind would be racing and he could not stop thinking.
Not surprisingly, the grueling schedule of an actor exhausted him which didn’t help matters.
As he prepared for his part as the psychopathic Joker in the Dark Knight movie, Heath Ledger would experience many restless nights and mental stress. He took on this role because he wanted to challenge himself as an actor. It turned out to be a very lonely experience because Ledger was so dedicated to the role that he isolated himself in a hotel room for a month. He maintained an extremely strict diet and refused to break character even when off-set.
Despite his preparations, Ledger said he found the role to be mentally and emotionally exhausting. He already had problems sleeping and this additional stress prevented him from sleeping more than a few hours each night.
Heath Ledger was meticulous in his preparation for the role of the Joker in “The Dark Knight.” In order to get into the mind of the Joker, Ledger kept a diary in which he explored the character’s thoughts and motivations. He tried to find out as much as he could about him and tried different voices before he settled on the iconic voice and laugh associated with the psychopathic Joker.
