Anna Banana would like to hear Venus by Bananarama (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} kiefers) wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} ohnotheydidnt,@ 2008-09-28 15:25:00 |
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Everyone loves a good pun
He was one of Australia's brightest moviestars, but beneath the surface, Heath Ledger was in turmoil. A new book about the actor's life delves into the secrets surrounding his death.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008, started just as any other for Heath Ledger's housekeeper, 56-year-old Teresa Solomon.
Every Tuesday she'd visit his Manhattan apartment to clean up after the messy actor. Ledger, 28, had been living as most single men do, and he wasn't the neatest of people at the best of times. Solomon would let herself in and set about cleaning, whether he was in or not.
She arrived at about 12.30pm and found a note stuck to the fridge door. Ledger's handwritten scrawl warned her that he'd booked a masseuse to visit at 3pm.
The first item on the agenda was to change a light bulb in the bathroom next to Ledger's bedroom. According to CNN and Associated Press reports, Solomon claimed she saw the actor in bed and heard him snoring quietly. "I didn't think anything was wrong, I thought he was sleeping."
At 2.45pm, 40-year-old masseuse Diana Lee Wolozin arrived for her 3pm appointment. By 3.10pm, she was concerned her client had not woken, so she called him on his mobile phone, hoping to rouse him, and followed this by knocking loudly on his bedroom door.
There was no response from inside. Wolozin entered the bedroom, noting that Ledger seemed to still be asleep, and began setting up her massage table, failing to realise there was anything wrong with the actor.
Ready to begin, Wolozin attempted to physically rouse Ledger, but his body was cold to the touch. Finally realising something was seriously wrong, Wolozin decided to call for help.
Rather than dial 911 for the emergency services, the befuddled masseuse called Ledger's latest friend, actor Mary-Kate Olsen, using his mobile phone, claiming she "wanted to avoid a media circus". However, Olsen was in California, so there was little she could do.
Wolozin made two calls to Olsen between 3.17pm and 3.20pm; in the second one, she expressed her fear that Ledger might be dead and said she was going to call 911, which she did at 3.26pm, but only after a third call to Olsen at 3.24pm.
Within seven minutes, New York City Fire Department paramedics were in the building. They discovered Ledger's naked body under a bedsheet. Nearby were several prescription pill bottles and a rolled-up $20 note. While the paramedics worked, Wolozin once again called Olsen at 3.34pm, keeping her up-to-date with developments.
The paramedics moved the actor's body to the floor in their attempts to revive him. By the time NYPD officers arrived minutes later, Heath Ledger had been formally declared dead at 3.36pm.
As the police investigated the apartment, looking for any clues that might explain the death, they discovered six different types of medication, including two prescribed to treat anxiety, another two for insomnia and two types of painkiller.
Three of the medications had been prescribed in Europe, and it was unlikely any of the doctors involved had been able to compare notes on what Ledger was apparently taking. No illegal drugs were found and there was no evidence the actor had been consuming alcohol.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in Perth, Ledger's family were about to discover the news of his unexpected death. According to his uncle, Neil Bell: "His mother and father heard of his death on the news. The whole family is devastated over his death, and more so over having to learn it from the media."
As Ledger's body was being removed from the apartment at 6.28pm, the news had spread far and wide. Thanks to the worldwide reach of the internet and the hungry needs of the 24/7 news cycle, TV crews were waiting to film the body being removed. A crowd of about 800 people stood outside in the cold, many with camera phones, striving to capture the moment.
Outside the Ledger family home in Attadale, his family issued a statement confirming his shocking death, but affirming that, if a drug overdose was responsible, it was almost certainly accidental. The statement was read out in front of waiting TV cameras by Ledger's father, Kim, flanked by his mother, Sally, and sister, Kate.
"Heath's family confirms the very tragic, untimely and accidental passing of our dearly loved son, brother and doting father of Matilda. He was found peacefully asleep in his New York apartment by his housekeeper at 3.30pm US time.
We would like to thank our friends and everyone around the world for their well wishes and kind thoughts at this time. Heath has touched so many people on so many different levels during his short life, but few had the pleasure of truly knowing him.
He was a down-to-earth, generous, kind-hearted, life-loving and selfless individual, who was extremely inspirational to many. Please now respect our family's need to grieve and come to terms with our loss privately."
It wasn't long before many who knew or worked with Ledger responded to the news of his passing. Model Helena Christensen was one of the first. "I was on my way over to pay him a visit when I found out," she said. "I had just left him a message and heard his voice on the machine."
After hearing the news in her hotel in Trollhattan, Sweden (where she was filming), Ledger's former fiancee Michelle Williams quickly arranged to return to the US with the couple's daughter, Matilda, 2. Arriving at her Brooklyn home on Wednesday evening, Williams ignored the media, making no comment.
Days later, she broke her silence, saying, "I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl, who is the spitting image of her father. All that I can cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day His family and I watch Matilda as she whispers to trees, hugs animals and takes steps two at a time, and we know that he is with us still. She will be brought up in the best memories of him."
Reaction across the world was swift, with an outpouring of grief and shock. It was disturbing for an actor of such promise to have his career and life with his young family cut short in such a manner.
As the flowers left by fans began to pile up outside Ledger's apartment, back in Perth his family were beginning to think about flying to the US to make the necessary funeral arrangements. Kim became the family spokesman and was determined to discover the true cause of his son's death.
During the latter half of 2007, Ledger was reeling from his separation from Williams and Matilda. It was an unhealthy state of affairs for a fragile actor who already suffered for his art.
Having developed the technique of full immersion in his characters, Ledger found it difficult to shake them off when filming finished. His anxieties about his screen performances and what they might mean for his career fuelled his growing insomnia. Seeking relief, the actor increasingly turned to prescription medicines to help him relax and sleep.
His journeys around the world - at this time he was hopping between London and New York shooting The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - meant he'd often draw on the services of several doctors. It appears that, for a long time, Ledger was a tragic accident just waiting to happen.
According to Us Weekly, Williams had wanted him to enter drug rehab as far back as March 2006, pointing to a possible deeper, long-standing drug problem. Describing Ledger as "depression prone", the magazine claimed he had a "cocaine, heroin and drink abuse problem" and that Williams was desperate to help him beat his demons.
When the couple split in September 2007, the official explanation was pressure from the demands of their work, but could Ledger's supposed escalating drug use have been a factor?
Moving out of the family's Brooklyn home, with only occasional access to his daughter, was a severe blow to Ledger, who tended to be anxious and distressed at the best of times.
His anxiety over the separation built on lingering bad feelings from his performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight, which wrapped in November 2007, and the harassment he'd suffered from the paparazzi over several years. "It was an exhausting process," Ledger had claimed of immersing himself in the psycho role.
"I actually had quite a bit of time off between scenes - weeks sometimes. But it was required because whenever I was working, it exhausted me to the bone. At the end of the day, I couldn't move. I couldn't talk. I was absolutely wrecked."
Ledger found he had even more trouble sleeping while making The Dark Knight. "Last week, I probably slept an average of two hours a night," he claimed as production came to an end. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." One night, he took a sleeping pill called Ambien, but it failed to work.
He took a second, only to fall into a disturbed stupor and wake up just an hour later, his mind still racing.
His anxiety was partly what led to his critically acclaimed turn in 2005's Brokeback Mountain. So focused was he on becoming Ennis Del Mar, body and soul, he'd had trouble leaving the character behind. "I'd go back to my trailer every night torturing myself, feeling like a failure. But I'd wake up the next morning wanting to do better," Ledger said.
His focus resulted in a career-making performance, but at great cost to his peace of mind. Ledger expressed fear that he'd be "found out" many times, and the more caught up he became in his screen characters - perhaps in an effort to escape his real life, which seemed to be spiralling out of his control - the more difficulties he created for himself.
"As actors, we're asked to bare our souls and it's just whether or not you're prepared to do that," he said. "It's quite therapeutic: I get to scream. Acting is also a form of escapism. You put on costumes, but what you're escaping from most of the time is life, the social world."Another habit Heath had was to date his movie co-stars, so it was little surprise when the New York newspapers linked him with his co-star in The Four Feathers, Kate Hudson.
During late 2007, he was seen with ex-girlfriend Heather Graham and actor Lindsay Lohan, and even at a launch party for former girlfriend Naomi Watts' new movie Eastern Promises. Australian model/actor Gemma Ward (from his hometown of Perth) was also on the growing list of women the press connected to him.
Christmas 2007 saw Ledger return to Perth with Ward, to spend the holidays with his family and her sister. They were spotted at the movies and in restaurants, as a couple or with members of Ledger's family, although Ledger tried to keep a low profile while in Perth. Those who saw him say he was on edge, but they put this down to him fretting over the failure of his relationship with Williams and worries about future access to his daughter.
In an interview about his work on I'm Not There (the last film he'd do promotional interviews for), Ledger had said, "I feel, in a sense, ready to die, because you live on in your child. I feel good about dying now, because I feel like I'm alive in her."
Around this time, two very different versions of Heath Ledger emerged. According to his family and Williams, he was a responsible family man devoted to his daughter, as well as being clean and sober. According to New York's show business demimonde, Ledger was instead a drug-abusing, womanising party animal simply out for a good time.
A feature article in New York Magazine carried quotes from an unnamed young woman who claimed to have had a three-month fling with him during this period. "Heath was obviously in a vulnerable state," she said.
"He didn't like being this star. He was kind of quiet unless he was comfortable, and it really seemed as if he was just trying to have fun. He had a party at his loft once, and it was really crazy.
There were drugs there, but he didn't touch them. I saw (drugs) offered to him multiple times. Ecstasy, cocaine, even prescription stuff - but he never touched it. I was with him at least a dozen times, and he was always sober. Just cigarettes." This was yet another piece of the seemingly contradictory jigsaw puzzle that made up the actor's final three months.
Early in January 2008, when Ledger was in London shooting The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, he was spotted acting out a scene in which his character is apparently hanged by the neck under a bridge. After his death, disturbing photographs from the scene appeared on the internet. Other images from his final year show an unhealthy looking man, seemingly older than his 28 years.
Co-star Christopher Plummer had noticed Ledger's ill health and feared he was suffering from "walking pneumonia. We all caught colds because we were shooting outside on horrible, damp nights," said Plummer. "What's more, Heath was saying all the time, 'Dammit, I can't sleep,' and he was taking all these pills."
When the shoot wrapped on January 19, Ledger flew back to New York to spend time with Matilda, but she and Williams were still in Sweden due to filming commitments. This no doubt disappointed Ledger - who hadn't seen Matilda for some time - and may have deepened his growing despondency.
Over his final weekend, Ledger was seen buying coffee at one of his regular haunts, Miro Cafe, on Sunday.
That night, he was seen drinking alone at trendy New York nightspot Beatrice Inn. Reports had the young actor wearing not only a hoodie, but also a ski mask, which effectively covered his face, making him look more burglar or terrorist than world-famous moviestar. Whether he was trying to avoid the paparazzi, or just hoping for some privacy, he can't have been anything but an unusual sight at the bar.
On Monday morning, Ledger was in Le Pain Quotidien, close to his apartment, where he enjoyed a light meal, according to People magazine. Early that evening, he went shopping at Gourmet Garage, where he was a regular, and left with three bags of groceries, including fruit and vegetables and organic chicken sausages. He packed his bags himself and was described as "very friendly, but pretty quiet".
According to one uncorroborated account, Ledger spent Monday evening having dinner at East Village vegetarian restaurant Angelica Kitchen, with two women. Possibly the last person to speak to him was The Four Feathers director Shekhar Kapur.
The pair had been discussing a variety of future projects. "I last spoke to him the night before he died. I had just arrived in New York. He said he could not see me that night but really wanted to meet me the next day," Kapur said. "He made me promise that I would call him in the morning to wake him up. I tried..."
Between Monday night and Tuesday morning, Ledger was apparently alone. How did he spend his evening back at his Manhattan apartment?
Based on his recent track record, he probably had trouble sleeping. Among the things he had to think about would be worries concerning his current role in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Was he achieving all he wanted to with the character? Did he feel as if he was a fraud once more, on the verge of being "found out"?
As the night wore on, Ledger seemingly fell back on his prescription medications to help him relax. They'd worked in the past in allowing him to slip into oblivion and forget his cares for a while, but less so now.
Did he think he'd try a few more in order to allow him some much sought-after sleep? Was he just tired, depressed, anxious and confused? Did he forget how many pills he'd already taken and, half-awake, half-asleep, take more? After all, they were prescribed by doctors, right: they must be safe. Intelligent though he was, Ledger didn't seem to consider the effect his multiple medications might have in combination.
Eventually, at some point during the long night or early morning, he fell asleep. It was to be a final sleep from which he would not awake.
Source
He was one of Australia's brightest moviestars, but beneath the surface, Heath Ledger was in turmoil. A new book about the actor's life delves into the secrets surrounding his death.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008, started just as any other for Heath Ledger's housekeeper, 56-year-old Teresa Solomon.
Every Tuesday she'd visit his Manhattan apartment to clean up after the messy actor. Ledger, 28, had been living as most single men do, and he wasn't the neatest of people at the best of times. Solomon would let herself in and set about cleaning, whether he was in or not.
She arrived at about 12.30pm and found a note stuck to the fridge door. Ledger's handwritten scrawl warned her that he'd booked a masseuse to visit at 3pm.
The first item on the agenda was to change a light bulb in the bathroom next to Ledger's bedroom. According to CNN and Associated Press reports, Solomon claimed she saw the actor in bed and heard him snoring quietly. "I didn't think anything was wrong, I thought he was sleeping."
At 2.45pm, 40-year-old masseuse Diana Lee Wolozin arrived for her 3pm appointment. By 3.10pm, she was concerned her client had not woken, so she called him on his mobile phone, hoping to rouse him, and followed this by knocking loudly on his bedroom door.
There was no response from inside. Wolozin entered the bedroom, noting that Ledger seemed to still be asleep, and began setting up her massage table, failing to realise there was anything wrong with the actor.
Ready to begin, Wolozin attempted to physically rouse Ledger, but his body was cold to the touch. Finally realising something was seriously wrong, Wolozin decided to call for help.
Rather than dial 911 for the emergency services, the befuddled masseuse called Ledger's latest friend, actor Mary-Kate Olsen, using his mobile phone, claiming she "wanted to avoid a media circus". However, Olsen was in California, so there was little she could do.
Wolozin made two calls to Olsen between 3.17pm and 3.20pm; in the second one, she expressed her fear that Ledger might be dead and said she was going to call 911, which she did at 3.26pm, but only after a third call to Olsen at 3.24pm.
Within seven minutes, New York City Fire Department paramedics were in the building. They discovered Ledger's naked body under a bedsheet. Nearby were several prescription pill bottles and a rolled-up $20 note. While the paramedics worked, Wolozin once again called Olsen at 3.34pm, keeping her up-to-date with developments.
The paramedics moved the actor's body to the floor in their attempts to revive him. By the time NYPD officers arrived minutes later, Heath Ledger had been formally declared dead at 3.36pm.
As the police investigated the apartment, looking for any clues that might explain the death, they discovered six different types of medication, including two prescribed to treat anxiety, another two for insomnia and two types of painkiller.
Three of the medications had been prescribed in Europe, and it was unlikely any of the doctors involved had been able to compare notes on what Ledger was apparently taking. No illegal drugs were found and there was no evidence the actor had been consuming alcohol.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in Perth, Ledger's family were about to discover the news of his unexpected death. According to his uncle, Neil Bell: "His mother and father heard of his death on the news. The whole family is devastated over his death, and more so over having to learn it from the media."
As Ledger's body was being removed from the apartment at 6.28pm, the news had spread far and wide. Thanks to the worldwide reach of the internet and the hungry needs of the 24/7 news cycle, TV crews were waiting to film the body being removed. A crowd of about 800 people stood outside in the cold, many with camera phones, striving to capture the moment.
Outside the Ledger family home in Attadale, his family issued a statement confirming his shocking death, but affirming that, if a drug overdose was responsible, it was almost certainly accidental. The statement was read out in front of waiting TV cameras by Ledger's father, Kim, flanked by his mother, Sally, and sister, Kate.
"Heath's family confirms the very tragic, untimely and accidental passing of our dearly loved son, brother and doting father of Matilda. He was found peacefully asleep in his New York apartment by his housekeeper at 3.30pm US time.
We would like to thank our friends and everyone around the world for their well wishes and kind thoughts at this time. Heath has touched so many people on so many different levels during his short life, but few had the pleasure of truly knowing him.
He was a down-to-earth, generous, kind-hearted, life-loving and selfless individual, who was extremely inspirational to many. Please now respect our family's need to grieve and come to terms with our loss privately."
It wasn't long before many who knew or worked with Ledger responded to the news of his passing. Model Helena Christensen was one of the first. "I was on my way over to pay him a visit when I found out," she said. "I had just left him a message and heard his voice on the machine."
After hearing the news in her hotel in Trollhattan, Sweden (where she was filming), Ledger's former fiancee Michelle Williams quickly arranged to return to the US with the couple's daughter, Matilda, 2. Arriving at her Brooklyn home on Wednesday evening, Williams ignored the media, making no comment.
Days later, she broke her silence, saying, "I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl, who is the spitting image of her father. All that I can cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day His family and I watch Matilda as she whispers to trees, hugs animals and takes steps two at a time, and we know that he is with us still. She will be brought up in the best memories of him."
Reaction across the world was swift, with an outpouring of grief and shock. It was disturbing for an actor of such promise to have his career and life with his young family cut short in such a manner.
As the flowers left by fans began to pile up outside Ledger's apartment, back in Perth his family were beginning to think about flying to the US to make the necessary funeral arrangements. Kim became the family spokesman and was determined to discover the true cause of his son's death.
During the latter half of 2007, Ledger was reeling from his separation from Williams and Matilda. It was an unhealthy state of affairs for a fragile actor who already suffered for his art.
Having developed the technique of full immersion in his characters, Ledger found it difficult to shake them off when filming finished. His anxieties about his screen performances and what they might mean for his career fuelled his growing insomnia. Seeking relief, the actor increasingly turned to prescription medicines to help him relax and sleep.
His journeys around the world - at this time he was hopping between London and New York shooting The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - meant he'd often draw on the services of several doctors. It appears that, for a long time, Ledger was a tragic accident just waiting to happen.
According to Us Weekly, Williams had wanted him to enter drug rehab as far back as March 2006, pointing to a possible deeper, long-standing drug problem. Describing Ledger as "depression prone", the magazine claimed he had a "cocaine, heroin and drink abuse problem" and that Williams was desperate to help him beat his demons.
When the couple split in September 2007, the official explanation was pressure from the demands of their work, but could Ledger's supposed escalating drug use have been a factor?
Moving out of the family's Brooklyn home, with only occasional access to his daughter, was a severe blow to Ledger, who tended to be anxious and distressed at the best of times.
His anxiety over the separation built on lingering bad feelings from his performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight, which wrapped in November 2007, and the harassment he'd suffered from the paparazzi over several years. "It was an exhausting process," Ledger had claimed of immersing himself in the psycho role.
"I actually had quite a bit of time off between scenes - weeks sometimes. But it was required because whenever I was working, it exhausted me to the bone. At the end of the day, I couldn't move. I couldn't talk. I was absolutely wrecked."
Ledger found he had even more trouble sleeping while making The Dark Knight. "Last week, I probably slept an average of two hours a night," he claimed as production came to an end. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." One night, he took a sleeping pill called Ambien, but it failed to work.
He took a second, only to fall into a disturbed stupor and wake up just an hour later, his mind still racing.
His anxiety was partly what led to his critically acclaimed turn in 2005's Brokeback Mountain. So focused was he on becoming Ennis Del Mar, body and soul, he'd had trouble leaving the character behind. "I'd go back to my trailer every night torturing myself, feeling like a failure. But I'd wake up the next morning wanting to do better," Ledger said.
His focus resulted in a career-making performance, but at great cost to his peace of mind. Ledger expressed fear that he'd be "found out" many times, and the more caught up he became in his screen characters - perhaps in an effort to escape his real life, which seemed to be spiralling out of his control - the more difficulties he created for himself.
"As actors, we're asked to bare our souls and it's just whether or not you're prepared to do that," he said. "It's quite therapeutic: I get to scream. Acting is also a form of escapism. You put on costumes, but what you're escaping from most of the time is life, the social world."Another habit Heath had was to date his movie co-stars, so it was little surprise when the New York newspapers linked him with his co-star in The Four Feathers, Kate Hudson.
During late 2007, he was seen with ex-girlfriend Heather Graham and actor Lindsay Lohan, and even at a launch party for former girlfriend Naomi Watts' new movie Eastern Promises. Australian model/actor Gemma Ward (from his hometown of Perth) was also on the growing list of women the press connected to him.
Christmas 2007 saw Ledger return to Perth with Ward, to spend the holidays with his family and her sister. They were spotted at the movies and in restaurants, as a couple or with members of Ledger's family, although Ledger tried to keep a low profile while in Perth. Those who saw him say he was on edge, but they put this down to him fretting over the failure of his relationship with Williams and worries about future access to his daughter.
In an interview about his work on I'm Not There (the last film he'd do promotional interviews for), Ledger had said, "I feel, in a sense, ready to die, because you live on in your child. I feel good about dying now, because I feel like I'm alive in her."
Around this time, two very different versions of Heath Ledger emerged. According to his family and Williams, he was a responsible family man devoted to his daughter, as well as being clean and sober. According to New York's show business demimonde, Ledger was instead a drug-abusing, womanising party animal simply out for a good time.
A feature article in New York Magazine carried quotes from an unnamed young woman who claimed to have had a three-month fling with him during this period. "Heath was obviously in a vulnerable state," she said.
"He didn't like being this star. He was kind of quiet unless he was comfortable, and it really seemed as if he was just trying to have fun. He had a party at his loft once, and it was really crazy.
There were drugs there, but he didn't touch them. I saw (drugs) offered to him multiple times. Ecstasy, cocaine, even prescription stuff - but he never touched it. I was with him at least a dozen times, and he was always sober. Just cigarettes." This was yet another piece of the seemingly contradictory jigsaw puzzle that made up the actor's final three months.
Early in January 2008, when Ledger was in London shooting The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, he was spotted acting out a scene in which his character is apparently hanged by the neck under a bridge. After his death, disturbing photographs from the scene appeared on the internet. Other images from his final year show an unhealthy looking man, seemingly older than his 28 years.
Co-star Christopher Plummer had noticed Ledger's ill health and feared he was suffering from "walking pneumonia. We all caught colds because we were shooting outside on horrible, damp nights," said Plummer. "What's more, Heath was saying all the time, 'Dammit, I can't sleep,' and he was taking all these pills."
When the shoot wrapped on January 19, Ledger flew back to New York to spend time with Matilda, but she and Williams were still in Sweden due to filming commitments. This no doubt disappointed Ledger - who hadn't seen Matilda for some time - and may have deepened his growing despondency.
Over his final weekend, Ledger was seen buying coffee at one of his regular haunts, Miro Cafe, on Sunday.
That night, he was seen drinking alone at trendy New York nightspot Beatrice Inn. Reports had the young actor wearing not only a hoodie, but also a ski mask, which effectively covered his face, making him look more burglar or terrorist than world-famous moviestar. Whether he was trying to avoid the paparazzi, or just hoping for some privacy, he can't have been anything but an unusual sight at the bar.
On Monday morning, Ledger was in Le Pain Quotidien, close to his apartment, where he enjoyed a light meal, according to People magazine. Early that evening, he went shopping at Gourmet Garage, where he was a regular, and left with three bags of groceries, including fruit and vegetables and organic chicken sausages. He packed his bags himself and was described as "very friendly, but pretty quiet".
According to one uncorroborated account, Ledger spent Monday evening having dinner at East Village vegetarian restaurant Angelica Kitchen, with two women. Possibly the last person to speak to him was The Four Feathers director Shekhar Kapur.
The pair had been discussing a variety of future projects. "I last spoke to him the night before he died. I had just arrived in New York. He said he could not see me that night but really wanted to meet me the next day," Kapur said. "He made me promise that I would call him in the morning to wake him up. I tried..."
Between Monday night and Tuesday morning, Ledger was apparently alone. How did he spend his evening back at his Manhattan apartment?
Based on his recent track record, he probably had trouble sleeping. Among the things he had to think about would be worries concerning his current role in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Was he achieving all he wanted to with the character? Did he feel as if he was a fraud once more, on the verge of being "found out"?
As the night wore on, Ledger seemingly fell back on his prescription medications to help him relax. They'd worked in the past in allowing him to slip into oblivion and forget his cares for a while, but less so now.
Did he think he'd try a few more in order to allow him some much sought-after sleep? Was he just tired, depressed, anxious and confused? Did he forget how many pills he'd already taken and, half-awake, half-asleep, take more? After all, they were prescribed by doctors, right: they must be safe. Intelligent though he was, Ledger didn't seem to consider the effect his multiple medications might have in combination.
Eventually, at some point during the long night or early morning, he fell asleep. It was to be a final sleep from which he would not awake.
Source
