CNN’s reporting that 28-year old actor Heath Ledger has been found dead in his Brooklyn apartment a SoHo apartment.
More as story develops…
Update: From NY Times: [Ledger] was found dead this afternoon in an apartment in Manhattan owned by the actress Mary-Kate Olsen, according to the New York City police. Mr. Ledger was 28… [He] unconscious on a bed, with pills scattered around his body.”
Update 2: TMZ reports that the SoHo apartment was not owned by Mary-Kate Olsen.
Also, here is a picture from outside a mysterious SoHo apartment, where Heath Ledger was found dead this afternoon. The photographer tells us that the man in the photo on the right is a detective who answered questions. Said photographer also writes, “Cops were kicking paparazzi off the street and 20 feet away on the sidewalk…Medical examiner truck has pulled up. Awaiting the body” Thus begins what will no doubt become a maddening scene the likes of which SoHo has not seen since the Apple store opened.
Eric
How sad. It was a pill overdose of sorts, I guess.
logan767
Really sad. What a great actor and wonderful personality.
Mikey
Really sad. I hate hearing about untimely deaths. It’s just hard to imagine that he’s dead, he’s been so active in his career and stuff these days.
Might want to remove those exclamation points though, it kind of makes it sound look like you’re celebrating it…
Maverick69
Very tragic. I can only imagine what everyone who loved him are going through right now.
If it was an overdose, Then what haunted him is finally over.
R.I.P.
You’ll be missed
Maverick69
Yeah, get those off of there.
What the hell is the matter with you people?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get those off. A man just died. Idiots !!!
Maverick69
He was found dead in Soho not Brooklyn!!!
Gawd, can’t you guys get it right?
Becca
How very sad. *sigh*
So young. So handsome.
R.I.P.
P.S. – “Heath Ledger has been found dead in his Brooklyn apartment” – He lives on Broome St in SoHo not in Brooklyn anymore.
Praenomenal
So much potential.
I am very sad.
Bitch Republic
He wasn’t found in his own apartment. He was in Mary Kate Olsen’s.
Exclamation points don’t mean you’re happy, they mean you’re exclaiming something, whether negative or positive. Don’t people know anything about grammar any more? DUH.
http://www.BitchRepublic.net
seitan-on-a-stick
Heath Ledger risked his Hollywood career to play one of the most pained “Gay onscreen roles” since Hillary Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry” Featured as “The Joker” in the upcoming Batman movie, this is a fine Aussie actor and another young talent gone too soon. He may have overdosed on Sleeping Pills pending an autopsy. The apartment at 421 Broome Street in SoHo (in lower Manhattan) is believed to be thsat of Mary-Kate Olsen’s of the Olsen Twins. He was only 28 and survived by his wife, Michelle Williams and co-star of “Brokeback Mountain” with whom he split and their daughter Mattilda. So very sad.
Billie
How very sad. I had no idea he was so young. He was such a mature actor. Wow.
Snoodle
A sad day for Hollywood. An amazing actor with so much talent and potential, gone all too quickly. I don’t think it’s fully sunk in for me yet really…
We’ll miss you.
HL
Wow, this is really sad.
Given Brad Renfro’s passing last week.
chris
they say most people who use exclamation points do so out of insecurity and this is usally found amongst women who have to get emotion across to be heard.
Michael Bedwell
GO TO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HDfzdc2oUA&feature=related
————
“Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I’m concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. He did indeed move inside the skin of the character, not just in the shirt but inside the person. It was remarkable. – Annie Proulx, author, Brokeback Mountain
“Heath Ledger’s wrenching performance is the stuff of Hollywood history.†– Manohla Dargis, NY Times
Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn. – Stephen Holden, NY Times
But maybe anyone would look thin next to Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar. The actor hunches over and pulls his emotions under his canvas coat; he doesn’t age so much as slowly cave in. That’s fitting: Ennis is both ennobled and shamed by feelings he doesn’t possess words to describe. ”This thing we have” is the closest he comes, and yet it’s the only real part of his life, despite the damage left in its wake. Ledger turns the classic iconography of the Western male — a cowboy hat pulled low, a measured drawl that says no more than it absolutely has to — into protective coloring. The genius of the performance is in how little he shows and how much he suggests. – Ty Burr, Boston Globe
Both actors do memorable work, but Ledger has the better role, and he makes the strongest choices. He gives Ennis a voice and mannerisms that are utterly idiosyncratic, and then inhabits those choices psychologically, making sense of the locked-down speech, the haunted look and the strong but diffident manner. He completely transforms himself. It’s a performance that was thought through in detail and then lived in the moment, and it’s one of the most beautiful things in movies this year. – Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle
Jack, a shade more comfortable with his nature, talks of getting a ranch together, but Ennis will have none of it: Stung by childhood memories of a rancher who lived with a man and got bashed for it, he fears — he knows — that exposure could kill them. In the classic Westerns, the cowboys were often men of few words, but Heath Ledger speaks in tones so low and gruff and raspy his words just about scrape ground, and he doesn’t string a whole lot of those words together. Ennis’ inexpressiveness is truly …inexpressive, yet ironically eloquent for that very reason, as tiny glimmers of soul escape his rigid facade. Ennis says nothing he doesn’t mean; he’s incapable of guile, yet he erupts in tantrums — the anger of a man who can’t be what he is and doesn’t realize the quandary is eating him alive. Ledger, with beady eyes and pursed lips, gives a performance of extraordinary, gnarled tenderness. Revolutionary. A film in which love feels almost as if it were being invented. – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
More than any of the others, Ledger brings this film alive by going so deeply into his character you wonder if he’ll be able to come back. Aside from his small but strong part in “Monster’s Ball,” nothing in the Australian-born Ledger’s previous credits prepares us for the power and authenticity of his work here as a laconic, interior man of the West, a performance so persuasive that “Brokeback Mountain” could not have succeeded without it. Ennis’ pain, his rage, his sense of longing and loss are real for the actor, and that makes them unforgettable for everyone else. – Kenneth Turan, LA Times
Ledger’s magnificent performance is an acting miracle. He seems to tear it from his insides. Ledger doesn’t just know how Ennis moves, speaks and listens; he knows how he breathes. To see him inhale the scent of a shirt hanging in Jack’s closet is to take measure of the pain of love lost. As Jack told him once, “That ol’ Brokeback got us good.” It hits you like a shot in the heart. – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
“What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger. They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis’s pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis’s breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, “Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you’re sleepin on your feet like a horse,” and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness.†– Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx
tom
meh he wasnt that hot
Kid A
Tom’s right, we should only care about hot people….
Sheesh.
Bob R
The death of Heath Ledger is indeed a tragedy. I think he was a great talent and had so much potential for growth and greatness, his death at such a young age makes my heart ache.
It’s been my life’s experience that these losses usually occur in threes. Just a week or so ago it was Brad Renfro. Today it’s Heath Ledger. Who will be next? I hope Owen Wilson is getting the help and support that he needs and is not that terrible third victim.
logan767
did anyone see the gawker/defamer video of heath’s body being taken out? – so wrong and f-ed up.
seitan-on-a-stick
CORRECTION to my previous POST, Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams were not MARRIED but she is obviously DEVASTATED as are his MANY fans. ABC News in Australia reports:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/23/2144671.htm
A YouTube tribute to “The Dark Knight” Joker, his final forthcoming role:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzHnxkLcQ_w
REST IN PEACE, Mate.
Heath Fan
Own a piece of gay history:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160201646855
todd
It’s interesting how the haze of drugs diminishes that supernova charisma that burns like a halo around these celebrities. Look at River Phoenix at the end, and Britney – who used to radiate. It’s like they’re extinguishing a fire that radiates out from within.
poof
Bob R… death came in 3. Brad Renfro, Suzanne Pheshette, and now Heath Ledger.
M Shane Walsh
Brokeback Mtn is, contrary to a lot of peoples’
prjudice, not that much of a love story as it is about the incredible pain and isolation that a lot of gay people suffer, depending on their degree of isolation, but something which is almost universal to gay people’s youth.
It’s anybody’s guess what would have happened if the pair had been transplanted to San Francisco in the late early 80’s, when sex when hot men wereall over. Their relationship could hve been more a product of loneliness.
This interpretation aligns itself with the paucity and impoversishment of everything in their lives. That was especially moving to me when Ennis went to Jack’s parents home with
only the few remnats of his existance. Even the parents were lonely and impoverished despite being together.
Undoubtedly, the acting and script were really so deep that no simple interpretation can suffice.
I remember seeing “Four Feathers” and some of his earlier work ands thought that Ledger was exceptional as an actor: somone for whom a short life ws realy tragic because it held promise for great longevity.
vck
im a real big fan of heath and his work…..ive never missed any of his movies and enjoyed every one of them…….
he is a superb actor and is able to perform even the most difficult of roles with ease….
the film industry has suffered a great loss…..
his family as well.