Damn. That story sucker-punched me. It's so sad, especially for his friends and family.
To be honest, I haven't seen any of his movies.
But when I saw the trailer for 'The Dark Knight', just the little glmpses you get of him as The Joker sent chills down my spine.
You're absolutely right, Jesse, everybody needs to quit speculating about what happened.
Hmmm
He's my age.
he's my age too, damn...too bad too bad...he was one of those actors i could stand in movies...Knights Tale was one of those movies i would always watch just for the bad mediaeval stuff, & i was pretty psyched for the new Batman too...terrible loss...
I can't believe it. 
That is just so wrong for someone that young to check out with everything going for him. (When I get to heaven, I'm going to give him and Steve both serious what-for for leaving way too soon, I swear...:P) I honestly thought HL was a lightweight/pretty-boy-de-jour after first seeing him in A KNIGHT'S TALE, but he proved his chops and talent in spades.
wife told me abotu this erayl this morning, one of ehr favorit actors..
no one coems out of life alive
Well I am going to probably piss off a few folk with my somewhat jaded take on this, but here goes anyway: After now having lived through the deaths of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, John Bonham, and even Kurt Cobain, I find it exceedingly difficult to muster sympathy for yet another self-indulgent twit.
OK I said my piece and I would hope we can now focus on the ACTUAL problems we as a nation are facing.
here's an excerpt from an email i sent to a friend who had written about this as the story broke. . .
holy shit. we so often see folks, on a stage, or on a screen, and we think we know them. i know this so very well, that people would see me on stage, slinging a guitar or caressing a harp and people would make all these assumptions, without knowing anything beyond the image that i was creating for them. they had no idea the demons i was battling, they had no idea what turmoils were pounding inside my guts and my head. i hated them for that.
poor sod. poor, silly sod.
t you are missing is that we all have the same pain, we all have teh same problems...every ones life is full of shit. Most of us don't have the talant, or teh money that can go with it. that is wh yI have very little simpathy for these guys...oh boo fucking who your life is soo fucking hard. guess what, every ones life is hard..every one has had hartache, every one faces pain, every one suffers...most of us don't have the million bucks to go with it.
Let's wait and see what more info shows up from autopsy.
There was one infobit said he had pneumonia at the time. True? I dunno. But if he was dehydrated and didn't know it, his judgment could have been way, waaaaaay out of whack ... easy to mess up meds in that state. Ask anyone with an elderly parent.
Bubba Bo Bob Brain -
I don't know you well enough to comment on your lack of empathy, except to note it.
moonglum -
You're a long-time regular at GNB. Part of what you frequently complain about is how people fail to take you seriously in your career, preferring to go for, in effect, the ______ for Dummies approach to things, instead of the books you write and perhaps the consulting arrangements you would come up with.
I suggest that part of the problem lies in your lack of empathy, your inability to place yourself in the other person's place. One example obviously is your reaction above. The other would be how you insist on misspelling everything, regardless of the impact on the reader, in effect, forcing us to deal with you, instead of simply running things through a spell-checker. This bespeaks of a lack of concern for others at a high level, which is clear in what you have to say in your comments about the death of a young man still in his twenties.
Such talk has no place here at GNB.
Jesse,
One bit of devil's advocacy here for Moonglum--if you have certain kinds of dyslexia, a spellchecker won't do shit for you other than fill your correspondence up with mismatched homonyms. 
RE the Meds angle--if he really DID have pneumonia and was already on a perscription sleep meds AND an OTC meds, it's more than possible that he was on some heavy-duty coedine cough syrup that put the nails in the coffin for him. Add dehydration (real easy to do with the standard grape-flavor hydrocodone they give you for pneumonia; I know; I was on it last year) and a low body fat percentage, and you're heading for trouble. Just still speculation, I know, but very plausible.
Jen -
I didn't know that about the dyslexia part. Thanks for telling me.
I like moonglum. Always have and he's very welcome here.
Jesse, I have empathy, for the kid, and her mother, but for Heath himself?? Not so much. I turn 50 in about 29 days, so I have lived through all of the deaths of the people I have named, and several others. I only calls 'em as I sees 'em, is it a tragedy, yeah for his parents, and whatever siblings, for the rest of us well again NOT SO MUCH. As for my lack of empathy towards Heath Ledger, well maybe if this nation weren't facing such serious problems I would be willing to devote a little more emotional energy to the cult of celebrity worship. I'd like to think you would at least respect my honesty about my feelings, and somewhat in my defense my diabetic daughter just spent the last two weekends in the hospital, and I got put on insulin to control my diabetes, so maybe it was some whacked out sugars talking, (not bloody likely though) When you examine all of the deaths I have named you (well maybe only me) can conclude they all committed suicide and it all depends upon the caliber of metaphysical gun they chose to use.
I respect your honesty. I appreciate it as well.
Honesty is good. Telling the truth is good. If you come to the point where the choice is to tell the truth or lie, tell the truth, even if you suspect it will reveal a lack of empathy and people will look at you funny.
I'm not kidding.
The damage that will occur to your identity from people discovering you lack empathy -- which they know already -- is VASTLY less, than the damage which will occur to your reputation if people discover you lie. Even if it's only little tiny lies.
There are damn few people who simply don't ever lie. It is worth more than your weight in gold to get an identity as one of those people.
Someday, and that day may never come, [your accumulated capital as a truth-teller] will call upon you to do a service for me. But, until that day, accept this [advice] as a gift.
It's not an attack on you. It's an attack on a way of being, called lack of empathy. They're different. I can like you, and like the contribution you are on the board, and have compassion for you & your daughter in the hospital and your situation with your meds and all that, and still call you to see what you can do about shifting your ability to put yourself over into feeling for others. I promise you, it is a learnable competency.
Anyway, got to go. Have to go home and get to bed. I'm working on something I am promised is a learnable competency, which is to go to bed at a certain time, and not stay up all night following whatever damn train of thought comes to mind. Heh.
maybe it's off topic, but in case anyone who would care is unaware, George MacDonald Fraser is also recently deceased this month...damn shame there, that man could write...ah well, at least he got to grow old...
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