Heath Ledger is DEAD

I– what? WHAT? I just walked in my door after work to the news scrolling across E! saying that Heath Ledger has DIED. Apparently he was found dead in his apartment:

A New York Police Department spokesman says the actor Heath Ledger has been found dead at a downtown Manhattan residence. According to TMZ.com, Ledger, 28, was found dead in his bed in one of his residences in Soho by his housekeeper at 3:35 p.m. ET Tuesday. The actor has a two-year-old daughter with former fiancée Michelle Williams. Ledger was set to play the Joker in the upcoming Batman film “The Dark Knight.” He received an Academy Award nomination for his work in “Brokeback Mountain.”

I don’t know what to say. Filming for “The Dark Knight” has wrapped — clearly it will be Ledger’s final film. I- I- I’m just at a loss for words. They suspect a drug overdose — his bed was strewn with sleeping pills, or so they say — but my gut (and it seems many others’) just doesn’t believe that it was intentional. CNN is speculating that it may involve his recent trip back from Australia; that the sleeping pills were for jetlag, that the supposed-overdose was accidental.

Oh my god. I just don’t know what to think. This is devestating.

Update: There’s a lot of places you can go for news updates. This is not a news update. This is an attempt to express my feelings about his death, to explain why I’m so, so sad about it.

To be very honest, I was never a faithful Heath Ledger fan. I saw “A Knight’s Tale” when it first came out, loved it, then totally forgot about Heath. Saw parts of “Brokeback Mountain,” never the whole thing (I know, I know, I’m like the only American who hasn’t seen it. Even the homophobes have seen it.); saw “I’m Not There” and thought he was great. I am damn excited for “The Dark Knight” because for the first time, in the little droplets of his Joker that leaked, I saw true brilliance. I was one of the people firmly convinced that the next 5 years were going to see Heath Ledger become a full fledged Hollywood Star. He was going to be huge; win tons of awards; play interested, nuanced characters and play them well. I was sure of it. And now, now it will never be.

He looked like a good father, in the candid pictures I saw. He looked like a happy father, and his daughter looked like a happy girl. It is so, so tragic that she will grow up without a man who looked to be a truly loving person. I feel terrible for his daughter, and for Michelle Williams, because I think that if you can commit to a person enough to have their baby, even if it doesn’t work out there is a part of you that will always love them deeply. And she was not shy about how much she still cared about him, as a person, as a friend.

My heart goes out to his family, to his friends, to those who were lucky enough to act with him, to eat with him, to talk with him. I have more respect for Heath Ledger than I ever realized I did, and I think that his untimely death is going to leave a hole in our films for years to come. It is a tragedy when someone of true talent dies, and I think we were just beginning to realize how truly talented he was.

I hope you’re okay where you are, Heath.

–Sara Tenenbaum