{"id":70,"date":"2009-06-30T12:12:27","date_gmt":"2009-06-30T02:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sandralee.com.au\/?p=70"},"modified":"2009-07-02T09:42:40","modified_gmt":"2009-07-01T23:42:40","slug":"heath-ledge-rest-in-peace-forget-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/2009\/06\/heath-ledge-rest-in-peace-forget-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Heath Ledger: rest in peace? Forget it."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Heath

Heath Ledger on the August cover of Vanity Fair<\/p><\/div>\n

If anyone thought Heath Ledger <\/span>was going to rest in peace and his legacy in the entertainment industry would be allowed to speak for itself, forget it.<\/p>\n

The August edition of pop culture Bible <\/span>Vanity Fair<\/span> <\/em>has a cover story on the Academy Award winning actor which dissects his final days and speculates on the break down of his relationship with Michelle Williams<\/span>. Writer Peter Biskind quotes Ledger’s colleagues who variously claim the 28-year-old once smoked marijuana on a regular basis until it became a problem when he gave it up and became “clean as a whistle”: was addicted to sleeping pills (nothing new there): and had a rapidly deteriorating relationship with the mother of his child from whom he had already split.<\/p>\n

No doubt the comments about the relationship with Williams are going to have the biggest impact. What will she make of the public vivisection of her failed relationship with her Brokeback Mountain<\/em> co-star and\u00a0subsequent custody and settlement battles as portrayed by VF?<\/p>\n

Take a look at this excerpt from Vanity Fair<\/em>, which quotes\u00a0Terry Gilliam<\/span>,\u00a0the\u00a0director of Ledger’s final film Doctor Parnassu<\/span><\/em>s, <\/em>and another “source”:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“He was trying to be decent and graceful, give her whatever she wanted\u2014the 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, \u2018This is bullshit. Heath, just end it. Get out\u2014it\u2019s bad. You\u2019ve got to just walk away from it.\u2019 The stakes kept going up. He wouldn\u2019t listen to any of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Ledger\u2019s relationship with Williams unraveled, and the pair started dealing with lawyers and custody issues, according to Gilliam, Ledger fell apart. \u201cThe thing that really made Heath snap\u201d was legal wrangling over his daughter, Matilda, Gilliam says. \u201cHe said, \u2018Just fuck all of you! I\u2019m not giving Michelle anything.\u2019???\u201d Recalls another source, when it came to Matilda\u2019s care, \u201cthere were definitely heated conversations, and emotions were high.\u201d (Ledger\u2019s lawyer declined to comment on any aspect of the separation or custody dispute.)<\/p>\n

“I’m not giving Michelle anything”?<\/em> Do you really think Ledger would resort to such tough tactics? Is anyone worried that revelations over his wrangling with Williams about Matilda and property might damage Ledger’s legacy and reputation?<\/p>\n

I interviewed a then teenaged Ledger back in 1997 for US magazine, TV Guide. <\/em>The magazine wanted to know all about this young Aussie was who had scored a\u00a0big break on American TV with the Shaun Cassidy (remember him?) produced series,\u00a0Roar<\/em>. Back then, Ledger was a shy bloke who seemed genuinely surprised that he had been hand-picked by a US producer for the series, which was shot on the Gold Coast. Cassidy was extremely prescient: he said the young Australian was a stand-out in his auditions and as history tells it, Cassidy’s early talent spotting was proved right.<\/p>\n

Oh, and Ledger was a decent young man.<\/p>\n

For more from Vanity Fair <\/em>go here<\/a>:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If anyone thought Heath Ledger was going to rest in peace and his legacy in the entertainment industry would be allowed to speak for itself, forget it. The August edition of pop culture Bible Vanity Fair has a cover story on the Academy Award winning actor which dissects his final days and speculates on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebrity","category-media","category-pop-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}