Quote: According to Pecorini, “Heath was always blaming himself [about the
relationship], asking, What did I do wrong?” Adds Gilliam, “Because he’s a
much nicer person than I am, he really thought he could do the right thing.
He was trying to be decent and graceful, give her whatever she wanted - the
house, every fucking thing. But once it started going south, it went very
quickly. He was overwhelmed by lawyers, and there were more and more of
them, as if they were breeding. I said, ‘This is bullshit. Heath, just end
it. Get out - it’s bad. You've got to just walk away from it.’ The stakes
kept going up. He wouldn't listen to any of us.” As Ledger’s relationship
with Williams unraveled, and the pair started dealing with lawyers and
custody issues, according to Gilliam, Ledger fell apart. “The thing that
really made Heath snap” was legal wrangling over his daughter, Matilda,
Gilliam says. “He said, ‘Just fuck all of you! I'm not giving Michelle
anything.’?” Recalls another source, when it came to Matilda’s care, “there
were definitely heated conversations, and emotions were high.” (Ledger’s
lawyer declined to comment on any aspect of the separation or custody
dispute.)

---------------------------------------------------

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25722459-5012974,00.html

Herald Sun (Melbourne)
2 July 2009

Split with Williams made Heath Ledger snap ­ Vanity Fair

The anguish of his relationship breakdown and custody battle contributed to
Heath Ledger's unstable state in the weeks before he died, according to
Vanity Fair.

The legal dispute with over his daughter Matilda “really made Heath snap,”
friend and mentor Terry Gilliam told the magazine.

“He really thought he could do the right thing. He was trying to be decent
and graceful, give her (Williams) whatever she wanted — the house, every
f**king thing," Gilliam said.

In pictures: Heath Ledger's extraordinary life

"But once it started going south, it went very quickly. He was overwhelmed
by lawyers, and there were more and more of them, as if they were breeding.”

Gilliam was directing Ledger in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus at the
time of his death.

Gilliam said the ordeal drove Ledger to work harder, to distract himself
from his personal worries.

Ledger was also a regular pot smoker, according to Parnassus
cinematographer Nicola Pecorini.

However, when it became a problem he “went clean as a whistle,” Pecorini
said. He also stopped drinking.

“Heath would happily go to the bar, buy a round of drinks for friends, and
come back and have a soda or juice, never once drinking alcohol,” his voice
coach Gerry Grennell told Vanity Fair.

“Everyone has a different view of how he passed away. From my perspective,
and knowing him as well as I did, and being around him as much as I was, it
was a combination of exhaustion, sleeping medication … and perhaps the
after-effects of the flu.

"I guess his body just stopped breathing.”

------------------------------------------------------

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/06/why-was-heath-ledger-so.html

Vanity Fair
29 June 2009, 12:01 AM

The Last of Heath

Why was Heath Ledger so ambivalent about his own stardom, and what happened
at the end of his life? Vanity Fair contributing editor Peter Biskind sheds
new light on these difficult-to-answer questions as he writes about the
actor’s remarkable talent and untimely death in the August cover story,
“The Last of Heath.”

In his article, Biskind explores Ledger’s final movie role, his uncertainty
about Hollywood, his devotion to his young daughter, and what happened in
the days and weeks leading up to his death as he battled chronic insomnia,
pneumonia, and exhaustion. Here are some of the revelations contained in
Biskind’s story.

How he cleaned up his act

Cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, who worked with Ledger on his last film,
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, says Ledger “used to smoke marijuana
on a regular basis, like probably 50 percent of Americans.” But after it
became an issue, Ledger “went clean as a whistle.” And vocal coach Gerry
Grennell, who worked and lived with the actor during the filming of The
Dark Knight, says Ledger even stopped drinking: “Heath would happily go to
the bar, buy a round of drinks for friends, and come back and have a soda
or juice, never once drinking alcohol.”

How chronic insomnia may have led to his death

Ledger’s use of sleeping medication to combat chronic insomnia at the end
of his life was of more concern to Grennell. “I’d say, ‘If you can possibly
bear it to stop taking the medications, do, because they don't seem to be
doing you any good.’ He agreed. It is very difficult for me to imagine how
close he came to not taking them.”

Ledger would typically spend night after night awake, diverting himself
with time killers, Biskind reports, such as re-arranging the furniture in
whatever space he happened to be living in at the moment. Grennell coached
him in the Alexander Technique, which helped him to sleep for a few hours
at a time, but he still struggled.

“Everyone has a different view of how he passed away,” Grennell tells
Biskind. “From my perspective, and knowing him as well as I did, and being
around him as much as I was, it was a combination of exhaustion, sleeping
medication ... and perhaps the aftereffects of the flu. I guess his body
just stopped breathing.”

How his relationship failed

Terry Gilliam - Ledger’s friend and mentor, and the director of Doctor
Parnassus - agrees with Pecorini that the romance between Ledger and
Williams began to unravel during the Oscar campaign for Brokeback Mountain.
“The whole machinery started growing up around them,” Gilliam says. “That
was the moment when it changed, when he realized, Uh-oh. We perceive the
world differently. He didn't care about things like those awards.”

According to Pecorini, “Heath was always blaming himself [about the
relationship], asking, What did I do wrong?” Adds Gilliam, “Because he’s a
much nicer person than I am, he really thought he could do the right thing.
He was trying to be decent and graceful, give her whatever she wanted - the
house, every fucking thing. But once it started going south, it went very
quickly. He was overwhelmed by lawyers, and there were more and more of
them, as if they were breeding. I said, ‘This is bullshit. Heath, just end
it. Get out - it’s bad. You've got to just walk away from it.’ The stakes
kept going up. He wouldn't listen to any of us.”

As Ledger’s relationship with Williams unraveled, and the pair started
dealing with lawyers and custody issues, according to Gilliam, Ledger fell
apart. “The thing that really made Heath snap” was legal wrangling over his
daughter, Matilda, Gilliam says. “He said, ‘Just fuck all of you! I'm not
giving Michelle anything.’?” Recalls another source, when it came to
Matilda’s care, “there were definitely heated conversations, and emotions
were high.” (Ledger’s lawyer declined to comment on any aspect of the
separation or custody dispute.)

His devotion to the job

The strife in his personal life coincided with the shoot for Gilliam’s
Parnassus, but rather than distract him from his work, Gilliam believes it
helped him concentrate on the task at hand, he tells Biskind. He appeared
one day on set “clearly bloody sick,” Gilliam says. The doctor told him it
was the beginning of pneumonia and that he ought to take antibiotics and go
home and rest. According to Gilliam, Ledger said, “No way. I’m not going to
go home, because I can’t sleep, and I’ll be just thinking about the
situation. I'd rather stay here and work.”

Although “he would arrive in the morning completely knackered,” Gilliam
says, “by the end of the day he was beaming, glowing with energy. It was
like everything was put into the work, because that was the joy; that’s
what he loved to do. The words were just pouring out. It was like he was
channeling.”

Ledger’s apathy for stardom

Ledger’s friend and agent, Steven Alexander, tells Biskind that Heath “was
always hesitant to be in a summer blockbuster, with the dolls and action
figures and everything else that comes with one of those movies. He was
afraid it would define him and limit his choices.” According to friends of
Ledger’s, one of the reasons he agreed to do Dark Knight was that the
unusually long shoot would give him an excuse to turn down other offers.

Alexander tells Biskind that Ledger had a pay-or-play deal on The Dark
Knight - meaning he'd get compensated no matter what - so he felt he had
the freedom to do whatever he wanted as the Joker. According to Pecorini,
Ledger hoped his performance would be so far-out he'd be fired, and thus
become the beneficiary of a lengthy, paid vacation.

“He was ready to bust out of the gate, but he didn't want to step on the
gas and become something that he didn't want to become: a matinee idol,”
says Alexander. “He was a private person, and he didn't want to share his
personal history with the press. It just wasn't up for sale. That’s part of
the reason he initially tore down his career. He wasn't motivated by money
or stardom, but by the respect of his peers, and for people to walk out of
a movie theater after they'd seen something that he'd worked on and say,
‘Wow, he really disappeared into that character.’ He was striving to become
an ‘illusionist,’ as he called it, able to create characters that weren't
there.”

The August issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles
on July 1 and nationally July 7.