In 2008, at the age of 28, Heath Ledger passed away having made preparations to appear in an additional film. Stephen Gaghan, the director, stated in a recent podcast appearance that the Oscar-winning actor from “The Dark Knight” had alternative goals at the time of his unfortunate accidental overdose death.
In an episode of the “Developmental Hell” podcast, which is a spin-off of Malcom Gladwell’s “Revisionist History” program, Gaghan revealed that he considered adapting “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” one of Gladwell’s books, into a film in the early 2000s. “I just had to put a pin in it,” he said following Ledger’s passing.
In 2008, following the untimely demise of the “Brokeback Mountain” actor, Gaghan received a phone call from Kim Ledger, his father, and an acquaintance of Ledger, who delivered the distressing news. Gaghan stated, “They were present with the corpse, our script was in bed with him, and your book was on the bedside table.”
“I believe my number was written, or something, on the script.” “As you might expect, these individuals are in a state of disbelief; they called that number for no apparent reason.”
Gaghan is Well Known For Various Achievements
In addition to writing and directing the 2005 political thriller “Syriana,” which earned a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, Gaghan,58, is also well-known for his work on Stephen Soderbergh’s 2000 picture “Traffic.”
During the podcast, Gaghan and Gladwell revealed that they worked together to adapt Gladwell’s 2005 book “Blink” into a motion picture, starring 49-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio. But in the end, Gaghan added, they determined that Ledger would be a better fit for the part.
With “essentially a green light at Universal [Studios],” DiCaprio was “really involved” in the movie’s pitch to studios. Gaghan claimed that his original plans for the film were altered after meeting Ledger.
“As soon as I met Heath Ledger, I felt an immediate connection with him. Gaghan said, “I just felt like we had a genuine connection that was, kind of, unusual and special to me.” “I became ecstatic and began to perceive him as the protagonist. I was unable to stop seeing that once I had begun to see it.
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“I’m in an airport with my wife, [Minnie Mortimer], just going from one place to another, and I just collapse—never happened to me before or since,” Gaghan recounted after receiving the heartbreaking call announcing Ledger’s passing. My legs gave way beneath me. I was like, what?,” so I sat down.
“I should not have been a party to the emotion, what [Ledger’s father and friend] were going through in any way really, but as a human, or as someone who just cares, I just was there and I was listening and my wife was looking at me,” he said. Her face comes to mind, and I recall being completely stunned. I simply kept listening without stopping. It was simply so depressing. It’s still depressing.
At the age of 18, Ledger’s daughter Matilda (with 43-year-old Michelle Williams) was just 2 when he passed away. Ledger was also filming “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” a 2009 film that Jude Law, Johnny Depp, and Colin Farrell had stepped in to finish, at the time of his death.