When Heath Ledger’s father, Kim Ledger, discovered him dead in his bed in 2008, he also found a phone number next to him.
That phone number belonged to Hollywood director Stephen Gaghan, who was working with the late actor on the movie adaptation of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking authored by Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaking to Gladwell on his Revisionist History podcast, Gaghan opened up about the moment he received the call from Kim – who was “in shock” – immediately after discovering his son’s lifeless body in his New York apartment.
“I got a phone call, they were on speakerphone and it was Heath Ledger’s father, who I’d never met… and a guy who was really close to him. They were there with the body, and our script was in bed with him, and your book was on the bedside table,” the director told Gladwell.
Recalling the moment he heard the news, Gaghan said he collapsed.
“My feet just went out from under me. I just literally sat down because I was like, ‘What? What?’ The emotion, 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,” he recalled.
Heath Ledger’s cause of death was determined to be an accidental prescription drug overdose.
