Heath Ledger was an iconic actor known around the world for portraying the role of The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Alongside the DC movie, the actor has also starred in notable movies like Brokeback Mountain and A Knight’s Tale.
Before his untimely death due to a drug overdose, the actor was suffering quite a lot. His friend Gerry Grennell, who lived with him before his accident talked about the moments leading up to his death. Stating the tragedies that Heath Ledger had been through, the world felt the loss of a great actor.
Heath Ledger’s Friend Recounts The Tragedies of The Actor
Ledger had a vivid persona that was quite unpredictable at times. The actor found his death due to an accidental drug overdose while he was shooting The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus after his Joker role in The Dark Knight.
His friend Gerry Grennell who used to live with the actor before his final moments, talked about how Ledger was suffering from terrible insomnia. Grennell stated that Heath Ledger would always seem exhausted and the concoction of various drugs and sleeping pills was not working on the actor at all.
“I would hear him wandering around the apartment and I’d get up and say, ‘Come on, man, get back to bed, you have to work tomorrow’. He said, ‘I can’t sleep, man.’”
Gerry Grennell further touched upon the fact that his then-girlfriend Michelle Williams left him with their 2-year-old daughter and Heath Ledger missed them both terribly.
“He missed his girl, he missed his family, he missed his little girl — he desperately wanted to see her and hold her and play with her. He was desperately unhappy, desperately sad.”
Despite the sadness and the drug use, Heath Ledger knew that he had to stop taking the medications. As per Grennell, Ledger even wanted to quit consuming drugs but he wasn’t able to control himself!
Heath Ledger Wanted To Quit Drugs
As Ledger’s conditions started getting more desperate, the actor hit a self-realization point where he wanted to quit drugs for good. Grennell stated that the actor told him that the drugs weren’t helping him at all and that he wanted to quit but he just couldn’t.
“He said, ‘I got to stop, it’s not helping, I’m not well, it’s making me feel more upset’. It wasn’t helping with the relationship issues, it wasn’t helping with missing his kid, it wasn’t helping his sleeping — and he knew that.”
Following an accidental drug overdose, the actor died on 22 January 2008 with his final movie credited to be The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The 2009 film is available to rent on Apple TV+.
Source: People
