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Heath
Ledger, whose chiseled good looks made him a heartthrob
to millions and who won movie fame for playing a tragic
homosexual cowboy, was found dead in a Manhattan
apartment today, the police said.
The body
of the Australian actor, who won an Academy Award
nomination for the 2005 movie
Brokeback
Mountain, was found hours after this year’s Oscar picks were
announced.
Ledger,
28, was found unconscious at 3:26 pm and pronounced dead
minutes later by emergency medical personnel, said
Detective Madelyne Galindo, a spokesman for the New York
Police Department (NYPD).
NYPD
spokesman Paul Browne said Ledger’s body was discovered
in the bedroom of his residence by his housekeeper and a
masseuse who had an appointment with the actor at
3 pm.
Contrary
to early reports, the apartment where he was found does
not belong to Mary-Kate Olsen, Browne said. The
spokesman also said that preliminary reports that pills
were found scattered around Ledger’s body were also
inaccurate.
The
police did find prescription sleeping pills in a
container in the bedroom and other pills in containers
in the bathroom, but Browne said it was too early to
establish a cause of death.
“We
haven’t made any determination,” he said, though he
added that there were no indications of foul play.
Minutes
after the news of Ledger’s death broke, a crowd of
several hundred people gathered outside the
SoHo apartment
where his body was found. TV crews and residents were
quickly joined by fans from around the city, including a
trio of acting students from Brooklyn who took the
subway over as soon as they learned of his death.
“It’s
sort of like James Dean died in this age,” said Daniel
Lonsbury, 18.
“Definitely, that’s why we ran down after we heard about
it,” said John Payne, 20, who added that he feels like
he grew up with Ledger.
The
acting students rattled off the various films Ledger has
starred in, remarking at the incredible range he
demonstrated in his short career.
“So many
actors get stuck in one image,” Payne said. “He wouldn’t
let that happen. It was kind of inspiring, just seeing
him grow. And talk about risks—Brokeback
Mountain.”
As
evening wore on, the crowd swelled as more and more
people came to the scene, most twentysomethings. Fans
climbed on scaffolding across the street from the
building to get a better view, many of them holding up
cell-phone cameras to capture the spectacle.
About 6
pm, an ambulance pulled up and the police began clearing
the crowd away from the entrance to the building as they
prepared to bring out Ledger’s body.
The
apartment where Ledger was found is in a posh section of
SoHo known for its sprawling, high-ceilinged lofts. A
listing for a 4,400-square-foot unit in the building at
421 Broome Street is on the rental market for $23,000 a
month, according to a listing on Corcoran.com, which
describes the unit as “a perfect evolution in modern
luxury living.”
Ledger
was born to romance in
Perth, in
western
Australia. His engineer father and French-teacher mother
named him for the hero in Emily Bronte’s classic
Wuthering
Heights.
He got
his first acting role playing Peter Pan at age 10 at a
local theater company. After several independent films,
Ledger moved to Los Angeles at age 19 and costarred
opposite Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You,
a teen-comedy reworking of The Taming of the Shrew.
“People
just love to bash
Los Angeles,”
Ledger told NW magazine in 2000, according to IMDB, an
online data base.
“People
say it’s so pretentious, so arrogant, so this and that.
But it’s truly a wonderful place. You don’t have to go
to the places where that stuff goes on. You don’t have
to go to
Beverly Hills,
you don’t have to go to the parties,” he was quoted as
saying.
“You can
live up in the lower canyon and live such a perfectly
healthy, beautiful, fun life with all your friends. You
can drive two hours one way and be at the Joshua Tree
desert, two hours one way you’re skiing at Big Bear.
Sure, it can get full-on and that’s why it’s good to get
out. But it’s too easy just to say: ‘Nup, I hate it. I’m
not living there anymore.’”
Ledger’s
fame will always be tied to
Brokeback
Mountain, the tender film of two cowboys and their tragic love.
Along
with the Oscar nomination, Ledger won the love of costar
Michelle Williams. They lived in Brooklyn with their
daughter, Matilda.
They
separated last year.
Before
his relationship with Williams, Ledger had highly
publicized relationships with actresses Heather Graham
and Naomi Watts. He met Watts while working on The
Lords of Dogtown, about the growth of skateboarding
in
Santa Monica
and Venice.
Ledger
will appear as the Joker this year in The Dark Knight,
a sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins.
The Dark
Knight
is one of the most-anticipated movies of 2008, and for
months Batman fans have been debating the film’s biggest
wild card: the choice of Ledger as the Joker, a role
that comes with the considerable challenge of filling
the clown shoes so memorably worn by Jack Nicholson in
1989.
“The
studio is stunned and devastated by this tragic news,”
said Alan Horn, president and chief operating officer of
Warner Bros., and Jeff Robinov, president of Warner
Bros. Pictures Group, in a statement. Warner produced
The Dark Knight.
“The
entertainment community has lost an enormous talent.
Heath was a brilliant actor and an exceptional person.
Our hearts go out to his family and friends,” they said.
Ledger
also had starring roles in A Knight’s Tale and
The Patriot, and played the suicidal son of Billy
Bob Thornton in Monster’s Ball.
His
latest film role was in I’m Not There, in which
he played one of the many incarnations of Bob Dylan.
Also in the film was Cate Blanchett, whose performance
in it earned her a supporting-actress Oscar nomination
Tuesday. |
