US:Heath Ledger had been suffering from insomnia at the time of his death, writes Donald Clarke
Late last year, Todd Haynes, director of I'm Not There, a peculiar study of Bob Dylan, chatted to the New York Timesabout Heath Ledger, one of the film's stars. "Dylan was completely inspired by James Dean," Haynes said. "And Heath has a little bit of James Dean in him, even physically, a kind of precocious seriousness."
Haynes's words have proved eerily prescient. In 1955 Dean, then just 24, died in a car crash. On Tuesday afternoon Ledger's naked body was found in a Manhattan apartment. An autopsy performed yesterday was inconclusive. However, further toxicology tests are pending.
The Australian, who turned 28 last April, may never quite gain the iconic status of Dean, but, after stirring performances in such contrasting pictures as Brokeback Mountain, Monster's Balland A Knight's Tale, he was on the way to becoming one of his era's most versatile heart-throbs. Later this year, he will appear as the Joker in The Dark Knight, the second of Christopher Nolan's reinventions of the Batman saga.
It is an impressive list of credits for a middle-class kid from Perth. Yet, even before Tuesday's sad events, it had become clear that Ledger never really enjoyed the auxiliary inconveniences that come with celebrity. Though endlessly courteous to film crews and media handlers, he could appear prickly during interviews and found it difficult to brush off the attentions of paparazzi.
His relations with the media in his native country were particularly uncomfortable. When, in 2005, he turned up for the Australian premier of Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's heartbreaking gay western, members of the domestic press, aware that Ledger had boasted about throwing eggs at photographers, produced water pistols and drenched the star.
According to Ledger's father, the incident persuaded him to sell his Sydney home.
"Heath had to go into the cinema and introduce that film soaking wet," Kim Ledger said. "He cried all night. He rang me and said, 'Dad, that's it - sell the house.'"
Heathcliff Andrew Ledger (named after the anti-hero of Wuthering Heights) had plenty of time to get used to the actor's life. His first role came at the age of 10 when he featured in an amateur theatre production of Peter Pan. Though he excelled as an athlete, he still found time to appear in a number of children's television shows and, in 1997, secured a major role as an ancient Irish warrior in the strange series Roar.
Ostentatiously handsome and gifted with a bewitching baritone voice, Ledger soon attracted the attention of American movie producers.
In 10 Things I Hate About You, a delightful updating of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrewfrom 1999, Ledger played a dishy Petruchio forced to accompany Julia Styles's surly teenager to the school prom. Though every sane critic who saw the film registered the arrival of a new star, it took some time for Ledger to secure roles worthy of his abilities.
A Knight's Tale, in which jousting took place to the accompaniment of Queen's We Will Rock You, was a great deal of fun, but very lightweight. The Order, a clerical horror film, gave new meaning to the word awful. He managed to stretch himself as the sensitive milksop in the searing Monster's Ball, but that was a relatively small part.
Ledger was, it seemed, too handsome to secure leading roles as anything other than the golden hunk. Then, in 2005, he appeared opposite Jake Gyllenhaal as one of two doomed gay lovers in the mighty Brokeback Mountain.
The performance secured Ledger an Oscar nomination and, shortly after Brokeback'srelease, Michelle Williams, who played his unhappy wife in the picture, gave birth to the couple's first child. Ledger, who had earlier dated such stars as Heather Graham and Naomi Watts, appeared to have his life in enviable order.
Sadly, by the time he gave that New York Timesinterview, turmoil had set in. Now separated from Williams, he admitted that, troubled by his preparations for the dark role of the Joker, he had been suffering from insomnia and had begun taking a popular (though controversial) tranquilliser named Ambien.
The journalist described Ledger fidgeting and knocking back coffee.
"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," he said. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going."
A few days previously he had taken one Ambien, then woken up and, after taking a second, had fallen "into a stupor".
Last March, the US Food and Drug Administration ordered the manufacturers of Ambien to make their warnings on the packaging more severe.
All this poses some serious difficulties for Warner Brothers, the studio behind The Dark Knight. The current poster features Ledger, his face that of a lunatic clown, leaning towards the viewer and asking the question: "Why so serious?"
Where to begin?