Video - Heath Ledger: "I feel good about dying"

Trailer for forthcoming film The Dark Knight

The actor Heath Ledger was found dead from a possible overdose last night, only days after shooting his latest film in East London. He died in a loft apartment in the trendy SoHo neighbourhood of New York.

Police said that the 28-year-old actor had been found when a masseuse called at the apartment for an appointment. A housekeeper went to tell Ledger that the masseuse had arrived, and found him dead at about 3.26 pm. Initial reports said that he was naked and face-down, surrounded by pills.

“We are investigating the possibility of an overdose,” Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, said.

Ledger, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Brokeback Mountain, will soon be seen on the big screen as the Joker in the Batman sequel The Dark Knight . He recently appeared in I’m Not There as one of six actors who played the musician Bob Dylan. Ledger, who was born in Australia, had been in London last week to shoot Terry Gilliam’s adventure fantasy The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus with Christopher Plummer and Lily Cole in Clerkenwell.

Ledger grew up in Perth and began performing amateur theatre at the age of 10. After moving to Sydney aged 16 to pursue an acting career, he was cast in roles in television films, and was also given guest spots on TV.

The young heart-throb first came to the public’s attention in 1996, when he played a gay cyclist inSnowy Bowles, a little-known Australian soap opera about Olympic hopefuls at the Western Australian Institute of Sport.

Ledger moved to Los Angeles and co-starred in 10 Things I Hate About You, a teen comedy interpretation of The Taming of the Shrew. Although he received offers for other teen films, he turned them down to wait for projects that he wanted. “It wasn’t a hard decision for me,” he said. “It was hard for everyone else around me to understand. Agents were like, ‘You’re crazy,’ my parents were like, ‘Come on, you have to eat’.”

The actor was linked romantically to Naomi Watts, whom he met on the set of Ned Kelly in 2002. But the couple reportedly stopped dating in August 2002. Ang Lee, the director of Brokeback Mountain, hailed Ledger’s performance as a gay cowboy in the film in 2005 as a “miracle”, reminiscent of a young Marlon Brando.

Ledger was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the character Ennis. The Oscar went to Phillip Seymour Hoffman for his portrayal of author Truman Capote in Capote, but Brokeback Mountain won three Academy Awards, including Best Director.

Ledger began a romance with his Brokeback Mountain co-star Michelle Williams. The couple, who have a two-year-old daughter, Matilda, split up in September. Talking about his daughter in a recent interview, Ledger said: “I feel good about dying because I feel alive through her.”

The celebrity Website TMZ.com, which broke the news of Ledger’s death, quoted a “confidant” as saying that the actor had suffered from a sustance abuse problem but had been “clean” for a year. A van from the New York Medical Examiner’s Office arrived at the apartment at 421 Broome Street last night to remove the body. A post-mortem examination will be conducted today, but toxicology tests will take at least several days.

On a role

— For his role in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger was nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Bafta

— One of his early breaks was in 1999 as the lead in the teen movie 10 Things I Hate About You

— In 2001 he had a starring role in the medieval romp A Knight’s Tale and a more serious part in Oscar-winning prison movie Monster’s Ball

— In 2005 he appeared in the film Casanova and in 2006 as a drug-addicted poet in Candy

Source: Internet Movie Database

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