Devastating new details emerge on Heath Ledger's death
New details have emerged about the hours after Heath Ledger's death, as a Hollywood director has shared how he found out about Ledger's passing.
Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York loft on January 22nd 2008, with his death being ruled as an accidental overdose and attributed to a mixture of prescription drugs, including OxyContin, Vicodin, Valium, Xanax, Unisom and Restoril.
Now, 16 years on from the high profile death, Hollywood director Stephen Gaghan has shared how he found out about Heath's death.
At the time of his passing, Ledger and Gaghan were working together on an adaptation of Malcolm Gladwell’s novel Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
Appearing on Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast, in which the novelist discusses abandoned projects, Gaghan recalled getting a phone call from Ledger's father when his body was found.
“They were there with the body and our script was in bed with him, and your book was on the bedside table,” he said on the podcast.
“I think my number was on the script, like written. These guys, as you can imagine, they are in shock and they dialled that number and I don’t know why.”
“I’m in an airport with my wife [Minnie Mortimer] just going from one place to another, and I literally just collapse, never happened to me before or since,” the director added. “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 as 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. I just listened and listened and listened. It was just really, really sad. And it’s still sad. For me, I just had to put a pin in it.”
When discussing the adaptation of Blink, Gaghan shared how Leo DiCaprio was originally in on the film idea, and how the part of the lead seemed to be written especially for Ledger.
“I’d gotten to be very, very close with him instantly,” Gaghan recalled. “I just had a real connection with him that was kind of unusual and really special to me. I got really excited and I started seeing him as the main character."
"Once I started seeing that I couldn’t unsee it, and obviously it was very delicate in a way. Leo’s totally cool. I mean, obviously, he has a thousand choices, but in my mind it was a big deal.”
Gaghan soon abandoned the revived project after Ledger’s untimely death.
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