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NEW YORK (AP) — Heath Ledger, the talented
28-year-old actor who gravitated toward dark, brooding roles that defied
his leading-man looks, was found dead Tuesday in a Manhattan apartment,
facedown at the foot of his bed with prescription sleeping pills
nearby, police said.
There was no obvious indication that the Australian-born Ledger had committed suicide, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.
Ledger had an appointment for a massage at the SoHo apartment that is believed to be the home of the Brokeback Mountain
actor, Browne said. The massage therapist and a housekeeper found his
naked body at about 3:30 p.m. They tried to revive him, but he was
already dead.
"I had such great hope for him," said Mel Gibson, who played Ledger's vengeful father in The Patriot, in a statement. "He was just taking off and to lose his life at such a young age is a tragic loss."
Outside the Manhattan building on an upscale
street, paparazzi and gawkers gathered, and several police officers put
up barricades to control the crowd of about 300. Onlookers craned their
necks as officers brought out a black bodybag on a gurney, took it
across the sidewalk and put it into a medical examiner's office van.
As the door opened, bystanders snapped pictures with camera phones, rolled video and said, "He's coming out!"
An autopsy was planned for Wednesday, medical examiner's office spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said.
While not a marquee movie star, Ledger was an
award-winning actor who chose his roles carefully rather than cashing in
on big-money parts. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance
as a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain. During filming, he met
Michelle Williams, who played his wife in the film. The two had a
daughter, now 2-year-old Matilda, and lived together in Brooklyn until
they split up last year.
It was a shocking and unforeseen conclusion for
one of Hollywood's bright young stars. Though his leading man looks
propelled him to early stardom in films like 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale, his career took a notable turn toward dramatic and brooding roles with 2001's Monster's Ball.
Ledger's publicist, Mara Buxbaum, said in a
statement: "We are all deeply saddened and shocked by this accident.
This is an extremely difficult time for his loved ones and we are asking
the media to please respect the family's privacy and avoid speculation
until the facts are known."
In the Australian city of Perth, where Ledger was
born and raised, his father called the actor's death "tragic, untimely
and accidental."
"He was (a) down-to-earth, generous,
kind-hearted, life-loving, unselfish individual, extremely inspirational
to many," Kim Ledger said, reading from a prepared statement. "Heath
has touched so many people on so many different levels during his short
life."
Ledger eschewed Hollywood glitz in favor of a
bohemian life in Brooklyn, where he became one of the borough's most
famous residents. Brokeback would be his breakthrough role, establishing him as one of his generation's finest talents and an actor willing to take risks.
Ledger began to gravitate more toward independent fare, including Lasse Hallstrom's Casanova and Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm, both released in 2005. His 2006 film Candy
now seems destined to have an especially haunting quality: In a
particularly realistic performance, Ledger played a poet wrestling with a
heroin addiction along with his girlfriend, played by Abbie Cornish.
But Ledger's most recent choices were arguably the boldest yet: He costarred in I'm Not There,
in which he played one of the many incarnations of Bob Dylan — as did
Cate Blanchett, whose performance in that film earned an Oscar
nomination Tuesday for best supporting actress.
And in what may be his final finished
performance, Ledger proved that he wouldn't be intimidated by taking on a
character as iconic as Jack Nicholson's Joker. Ledger's version of the Batman villain, glimpsed in early teaser trailers, made it clear that his Joker would be more depraved and dark.
Curiosity about Ledger's final performance will likely stoke further interest in the summer blockbuster. Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan said this month that Ledger's Joker would be wildly different from Nicholson's.
"It was a very great challenge for Heath," Nolan
said. "He's extremely original, extremely frightening, tremendously
edgy. A very young character, a very anarchic presence that taps into a
lot of our basic fears and panic."
Ledger told The New York Times in a November
interview that he "stressed out a little too much" during the Dylan film
and had trouble sleeping while portraying the Joker, whom he called a
"psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy."
"Last week I probably slept an average of two
hours a night," Ledger told the newspaper. "I couldn't stop thinking. My
body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." He said he took two
Ambien pills, which worked for only an hour, the paper said.
Ledger was a widely recognized figure in his
Manhattan neighborhood, where he used to shop at a home and children's
store. Michelle Vella, an employee there, said she had frequently seen
Ledger with his daughter — carrying the toddler on his shoulders, or
having ice cream with her.
"It's so sad. They were really close," Vella said. "He's a very down-to-earth guy and an amazing father."
Before settling down with Williams, Ledger had
relationships with actresses Heather Graham and Naomi Watts. He met
Watts while working on The Lords of Dogtown, a fictionalized version of a cult classic skateboarding documentary, in 2004.
Ledger was born in 1979 to a mining engineer and a
French teacher and got his first acting role playing Peter Pan at age
10 in a local theater company. He began acting in independent films as a
16-year-old in Sydney and played a cyclist hoping to land a spot on an
Olympic team in a 1996 television show, Seat.
After several independent films, Ledger moved to Los Angeles at age 19 and starred opposite Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You.
Offers for other teen flicks soon came his way, but Ledger turned them
down, preferring to remain idle than sign on for projects he didn't
like.
"It wasn't a hard decision for me," Ledger told
the Associated Press in 2001. "It was hard for everyone else around me
to understand. Agents were like, 'You're crazy,' my parents were like,
'Come on, you have to eat.'"
Contributing: Associated Press Writers Sara Kugler, Amy Westfeldt and Adam Goldman contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008
The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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