Oscar-Winning Screenwriter Reveals Previously Unknown Details About Heath Ledger’s Death

Oscar-winning filmmaker Stephen Gaghan revealed in a recent interview on Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast (via The Hollywood Reporter) that he’s “still sad” over the death of Heath Ledger more than 16 years ago. Gaghan won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for writing Traffic, Steven Soderbergh’s brilliant drug-market epic.

The writer, who has never before spoken of his relation to Ledger or the star’s demise, explained that at the time of his death, the actor was circling a Gaghan-penned adaptation of Gladwell’s book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

When Ledger's body was discovered, he was in bed with Gaghan’s script and Gladwell’s book beside him. Gaghan’s number was scrawled by Ledger on the screenplay, and so the filmmaker was the first person Ledger’s father, Kim, phoned upon arriving at the scene.

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

Gaghan went on, describing the scene in detail: “I’m in an airport with my wife [Minnie Mortimer] just going from one place to another, and I literally just collapse, never happened to me before or since. My feet went out from under me. I just literally sat down because I was like, what?”

Ledger passed away on January 22, 2006. It was ultimately ruled that he died of a lethal mix of prescription drugs including OxyContin, Vicodin, Valium, Xanax, Unisom, and Restoril.

Gaghan described to Gladwell why it’s taken him nearly two decades to tell the story, explaining that, in part, it didn’t feel like his tale to tell.

“The emotion, what they were going through, I should not have been a party to in any way really, and yet as a human or as somebody who just cares, I just was there and I was listening and my wife was looking at me,” Gaghan recalled. “I remember her face and I was just like, I was speechless. I just listened and listened and listened. It was just really, really sad. And it’s still sad. For me, I just had to put a pin in it.”

Gaghan had originally adapted Blink with Leonardo DiCaprio in mind, but after de-aging the character in rewrites, Ledger began to circle the project. “I’d gotten to be very, very close with him instantly. I just had a real connection with him that was kind of unusual and really special to me,” the writer said of Ledger. “I got really excited and I started seeing him as the main character. Once I started seeing that I couldn’t unsee it, and obviously it was very delicate in a way. Leo’s totally cool. I mean, obviously, he has a thousand choices, but in my mind [Ledger] was a big deal.”

Gaghan admitted he “had a feeling they were going to make a bunch of movies together,” adding “I love this guy,” about the late Australian star.

Blink was ultimately never produced. Gaghan has graduated to directing in recent years, helming the Matthew McConaughey curio Gold and the critically reviled Dolittle, starring Robert Downey Jr.