Heath Ledger No More

You may know him from The Order, Brokeback Mountain,  A Knight’s Tale, etc. Or from The Dark Knight as the Joker.  Yes, it’s Heath Ledger!

 Heath was born on April 1979 in Perth, Western Australia. In junior high, it was needed for him to be in either cooking or drama. He chose drama, of which he became very talented in. Sadly, his classmates didn’t believe so, possibly out of jealousy. At 17, he and a friend decided 2 leave school, and drive to Sydney. Heath believed that was where dreams were made, or mostly where actors can possibly get their big break!

Now, with approximately only 69 cents to his name, he did the best he could to get his career going. His first job was playing in a low budget movie, “Blackrock”, largely unimpressive. His role was quite short. You only see him getting knocked out. After that, he auditioned for a role on the TV show, “Sweat”. So, around here, he started getting into his career, auditioning in serveral films.

The only REAL movie that got him to where he is was “Brokeback Mountain”, of which he was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA! By now, the ending of his life, was closing in. Coincidently after (or really in the middle of) his role as The Joker in “The Dark Knight”. I have heard that Heath was told by one of the past Jokers that the role would change his life. And it did. Forever!

On January 22nd, at about 3:30pm, Heath Ledger was found dead on his bed by the house keeper, Teresa Solomon. She went into Heath’s bedroom to change a lightbulb in an ajoining bathroom, and noticed saw him with a sheet pulled up and around his shoulders, snoring.

Masseuse Diana Wolozin arrived at the apartment about 2:45pm to give him a massage. About 15 minutes later, when he had not come out of the bedroom and the door remained shut, she went in, saw him lying in bed, and set up a massage table nearby. She shook him, but no response. So she called Olsen, on of Heath’s friends, about this. So Olsen called for private security people. After talking with Olsen, she tried to wake him up again. Nothing. So she called Olsen, and said that it was an emergency, and called 911. While on the phone with the dispatchers (at 3:26pm), she did CPR. Nothing. When the emergency personnel arrived serveral minutes later,  they tried saving him as well. NOTHING!

He was pronounced dead at 3:36pm. By then, the police and security arrived. Some prescription meds were found where he died, not scattered. President Bush  postponed an event surrounding the launch of a public-service ad campaign warning against the dangers of prescription drug abuse.

“We thought it would be better to postpone the event rather than run the risk of anyone thinking that we were being opportunistic in highlighting the issue,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.