Stephen Gaghan Remembers The Horrible Moment He Learned Of Heath Ledger’s Death

Bruce Haring
·3 min read
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During his recent appearance on Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast miniseries, Development Hell, director Stephen Gaghan talked about the film he almost made with Heath Ledger. And the phone call that ended that dream.

Gaghan and Ledger wanted to adapt Gladwell’s book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, which explores the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye.

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Then he received a phone call from Ledger’s father and his close friend. Ledger had been found dead in his Manhattan apartment at the age of 28 on Jan. 22, 2008.

“They were there with the body, and our script was in bed with him, and your book was on the bedside table,” Gaghan told Gladwell. “I think my number was on the script — like written. These guys are in, as you can imagine, they are in shock. And they dialed that number, and I don’t know why.”

Gaghan was at an airport with his wife, Minnie Mortimer, at the time of the call.

“I literally just collapse. It’s never happened to me before or since. My feet went out from under me. I just literally sat down because I was like, ‘What? What?’ What they were going through I should not have been a party to in any way, really, and yet as a human and somebody who just cares, I just was there and I was listening. My wife was looking at me. I remember her face and I was just speechless. I just listened and listened and listened. It was just really, really sad. And it’s still sad.”

Ledger’s death was ruled accidental and attributed to a lethal dose of prescription medications.

That shock led Gaghan to put the Gladwell project aside. “For me, I just had to put a pin in it.”

The film was originally slated to star Leonardo DiCaprio, but script changes that called for a younger character took him out of it.

“This other thing had happened off-camera, which is that I met Heath Ledger and I’d gotten to be very, very close with him instantly,” Gaghan said. “I just had a real connection with him that was kind of unusual and really special to me. I got really excited, and I started seeing him as the main character. Once I started seeing that, I couldn’t un-see it.”

Revisiting the script has brought it back to the front of Gaghan’s mind.

“I got it out right before we got on. I was reading it. I was just like… ‘I could be crazy, but I think this script is really good,”’ he told Gladwell on the podcast. “We really had something really special, and we might’ve been ahead of our time or something.”

Gladwell agreed. “Maybe it’s time to bring Blink back to life,” he said. “If there’s someone listening in some big office somewhere in Hollywood, I will get on a plane tomorrow, if that’s what it takes.”

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