Heath Ledger’s dad Kim described the night as ‘bittersweet’Heath Ledger’s family spoke out about the ‘bittersweet’ moment they picked up his posthumous Oscar for Best Supporting actor in The Dark Knight.
Ledger died in 2008 at the age of just 28 following an accidental overdose of prescription medications.
He had already filmed The Dark Knight, which included a tribute to Ledger in the movie’s end credits.
The cast of the film all wore black to the film’s London premiere in honour of the Joker actor, with Christian Bale saying of Ledger in 2008: “When you miss somebody, you want to speak about him. He was a good man, and I was glad to have spent time with him.
“He was somebody who I’d been seeing on a daily basis for months.
Heath Ledger and Christian Bale in The Dark Knight (Warner Brothers)
“It takes a long time to accept that someone’s gone, when all body and mind are telling you that this is somebody you will know for a great deal of time. He was something of a kindred spirit to myself.”
Ledger’s family accepted the Oscar he won for his role as the Joker, with his sister, mother and father taking the stage.
His father said when accepting the award: “I have to say this is ever so humbling, being amongst such wonderful people and such a wonderful industry.
“This award tonight would have humbly validated Heath’s quiet determination to be accepted by you all here, his peers, within an industry he so loved.”
His family accepted the award on his behalf (Gabriel Bouys via Getty Images)
His mother went on to say: “Heath was such a compassionate and generous soul who added so much excitement and inspiration to our lives. We have been truly overwhelmed by the honour and respect bestowed upon him by this award.
“Tonight we are choosing to celebrate and be happy for what he achieved”.
His father, Kim Ledger, later spoke of the experience of accepting the award in 2016.
In conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, he said that ‘bittersweet is probably the best way [he] can describe that night’.
“It was only a year and a month since his passing. We hadn’t got our heads around the tragedy of losing him, but at the same time, he was receiving such accolades for what he knew was his best work.”
He went on to say: “It was peer recognition that was important to Heath and the Oscar was the epitome of that.”
Ledger’s father stated that the Oscar was in a museum at the time of the interview, but that it would eventually go to Ledger’s daughter Matilda, whom he shared with his Brokeback Mountain co-star Michelle Williams.
Williams said in a heartbreaking interview with Porter magazine: “In all honesty, for pretty much everything else, I feel like I’m a believer in not fighting circumstances, accepting where you are and where you’ve been.
“In pretty much all senses but one, I would be able to go totally down that line of thinking were it not for Matilda not having her dad.
“You know, that’s just something that doesn’t…I mean, it just won’t ever be right”.
Resurfaced footage shows the heartbreaking reaction from the room when Heath Ledger won an Oscar after his passing.
Just over 12 months after his death, the late actor won the Best Supporting Actor award for his iconic performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight.
On 22 January 2008, Ledger died at the age of 28 after accidentally overdosing on prescription painkillers while The Dark Knight was in the final stages of production.
When he was announced as a winner at the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009, the celebrities in the crowd appeared to look visibly upset.
Watch below:
Ledger’s father Kim Ledger, his mother Sally Bell and older sister Kate Ledger went up on stage to collect the award on the Brokeback Mountain star’s behalf.
During the acceptance speech, Kim said the Oscar would have been validation of his son’s ‘quiet determination to be truly accepted’ by his fellow Hollywood stars.
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The speeches from Ledger’s family members were delivered to an audience on the verge of tears as the footage of the awards ceremony shows some of the brightest lights of the movie industry overcome with emotion.
While his mother said they would be using the moment to be ‘happy for what he has achieved’, the room full of Hollywood’s brightest lights was clearly struck by sorrow for having lost one of their own number.
The reaction of major stars like Brad Pitt, Anne Hathaway, Ben Kingsley and Kate Winslet to a much deserved award that Ledger didn’t live to receive himself is truly heartbreaking.
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Kate spoke to her brother the night before he died and said they were ‘laughing and joking’, while she dispelled any rumours that his performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight or his preparation for the role had contributed to his death.
There had been claims that Ledger’s dedication to the role, including locking himself in a hotel room for weeks and keeping a diary of his character’s thoughts had contributed in some way to his death, but his sister refuted those suggestions.
She explained that he’d been ‘so proud’ of what he’d done on the movie and was looking forward to appearing in another as he’d ‘had the best time ever’ working on the film.
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She said: “He loved working with Chris Nolan and Christian Bale and Gary Oldman.
“When he came home at Christmas, he couldn’t wait to tell us all about it, and he was doing the voice and laughing, showing me all the rushes. We had a great time.”
For many fans, he’s the greatest actor to play The Joker of all time and his performance in The Dark Knight will live forever in memory – even if it’s such a shame that he never got to hold the Oscar he earned.
Rumours have persisted for years that Shia LaBeouf ‘knocked out’ Tom Hardy on the set of a movie, so much so that the star was forced to respond.
The supposed incident was alleged to have taken place when the two were filming Lawless, a 2021 film starring the two men.
Tension between the pair grew as the film went on, culminating in them apparently scrapping off-set.
Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy with their Lawless co-star Jessica Chastain (Vittorio Zunino Celotto/WireImage for Electrolux via Getty Images)
Hardy himself claimed that he was ‘knocked out’, but it seems he was speaking in jest, as LaBeouf called these rumours ‘a bunch of bullshit’.
When asked by Hot Ones host Sean Evans, LaBeouf said: “We used to wrestle all the time and [Tom Hardy’s] a big fucking person, especially then.
“He was getting ready [to act in The Dark Knight Rises as] Bane.”
LaBeouf recounted how Hardy barged in after a gym session and the two began scrapping, saying: “We used to fuck with each other all the time but it just so happened that, this one week, my girlfriend was in town and he runs into the room.
“The girl I was with at the time was terrified.
The pair starred in Lawless together (Filmination Entertainment)
“She covered up and she ran into the kitchen and he picked me up and I didn’t have nothing on so now I’m naked on his shoulder. We’re in the hallway, we’re wrestling around.”
LaBeouf revealed that for ‘the rest of the shoot’, Hardy went around telling the crew and cast that the controversial Transformers star had knocked him out.
LaBeouf at the time of the interview was resurgent in Hollywood, widely praised for writing Honey Boy, what he claimed was an autobiographical look at his own life in which he played his abusive father.
He later revealed that the film’s portrayal of his father was ‘f*cking nonsense’, saying: “I turned the knob up on certain shit that wasn’t real. My dad never hit me, never”.
He went on to say, on Jon Bernthal’s podcast: “My dad was so loving to me my whole life.
Shia LaBeouf starred as a version of his father in his own story (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Fractured, sure. Crooked, sure. Wonky, for sure. But never was not loving, never was not there. He was always there… and I’d done a world press tour about how fucked he was as a man.”
The actor now finds himself in hot water legally for a separate issue, after ex-partner FKA Twigs has sued LaBeouf claiming ‘sexual battery, battery, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress and gross negligence’.
Though LaBeouf faced a Hollywood exile after the allegations came to light, he recently ended this by starring in box office and critical flop Megalopolis.
Joining him in the cast was another ‘cancelled’ figure in Jon Voight, an outspoken Trump supporter who accused Joe Biden of ‘electoral fraud’.
Voight and LaBeouf (Gisela Schober via Getty Images)
Director Francis Ford Coppola said of hiring the pair for the movie: “What I didn’t want to happen is that we’re deemed some woke Hollywood production that’s simply lecturing viewers.
“The cast features people who were cancelled at one point or another. There were people who are archconservatives and others who are extremely politically progressive.
“But we were all working on one film together. That was interesting, I thought.”
LaBeouf has denied allegations of abuse from FKA Twigs.
A friend of Heath Ledger has shared new details about the star’s struggles with fame before his tragic death 16 years ago.
Australian actor Samuel Johnson opened up about his relationship with the late performer and revealed that the 28-year-old had confided in him about his troubles with being in the spotlight.
He was one of the first people to pay tribute to The Dark Knight actor after his tragic death in 2008 following a prescription drug overdose in his New York apartment, which was ruled an ‘accident’.
A coroner concluded that Ledger died due ‘acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine’.
Ledger’s death was said to have been a result of ‘the abuse of prescribed medications’, combined with a possible chest infection that stopped him breathing.
At the time, Johnson said of his pal: “His portrayal of The Joker in the new Batman was going to rival Jack Nicholson’s in the original.
“I’m distraught about this…I think we’ve lost one of the best young actors Australia’s produced – if not the best.”
Ledger and Johnson, 46, started off their careers with small TV roles Down Under, with them both having stints on the iconic soap Home and Away as teenagers.
Although Ledger’s career hit Hollywood heights and his friend’s did not, the pair remained close.
Heath Ledger’s pal has revealed the actor struggled with being in the spotlight (Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage)
During an appearance on KIIS FM’s Will and Woody Show on Thursday (18 July), Johnson admitted that he had struggled with being in the public eye, saying the baggage that comes along with it, which left him ‘highly dubious’ about people.
The Secret Life of Us star explained that being introduced to other Aussie icons such as Isla Fisher, Kate Ritchie, and Melissa George on the set of Home and Away ‘hit him like a truck’.
He said: “I went to school the next day, and all of a sudden all the girls were sitting with a space next to them. They were all patting the chairs, saying, ‘Sit next to me’ all of a sudden. So, overnight my life changed.
“I mean everyone and everything changed. I can understand why people freak out a bit because you go around your life being Sam then all of a sudden your family and people around you change a lot.”
Johnson then compared his level of fame to that of Ledger’s, while recalling a conversation they had while taking a walk together one day – as even having a stroll was an ‘intense’ experience with the Brokeback Mountain star.
Samuel Jackson explained that simply walking down the street with the star was ‘intense’ (Hannah Mason/WireImage)
He continued: “I did walk down the street with him [once]. I remember in about three quarters of a block, there were four girls that fainted. They literally just dropped when they saw him.
“I couldn’t believe it. Not one, not two, not three, four inside a block. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was phenomenal.
“I asked him ‘how do you cope?’ And he just looked at me with a world of sadness in his eyes and said: ‘I don’t’.”
Ledger’s death rocked famous faces across the world as well as fans.
Hollywood director Stephen Gaghan previously told how his ‘feet went out from under him’ and he was left ‘speechless’ after being told the news about the actor’s passing.
Celebrities were also seen on the verge of tears when Ledger’s father Kim, his mother Sally Bell and older sister Kate collected the Oscar he was posthumously awarded for Best Supporting Actor in The Dark Knight.
The gong was reportedly gifted to Ledger’s daughter Matilda, who he shared with Michelle Williams, on her 18th birthday last year, according to New Idea.
Every now and again in your walks of life you’ll come across a house and think ‘how on earth is that still standing and who lives there’.
Sometimes the house looks out of place because it’s surrounded on all sides by new developments, while at other times it looks to be the last one standing out of anywhere to live.
If you ever have cause to be driving down the M62 motorway then you might have spotted what looks like a farmhouse perched between the carriageways.
It’s no mirage and nor is it a particularly artisanal service station that’s becoming all the rage these days, it’s a place called Stott Hall Farm.
You might be wondering who’d build a house in the middle of a motorway but the house was there first, having been constructed in the 18th century before there was any motor to way.
It’s plonked in the middle of the M62, or rather the M62 was plonked either side of the house (BBC)
When they finally did get round to building the M62 a geological fault was discovered underneath the farmhouse which meant it wouldn’t have been a great place to put a road on, so instead the road went around the farm.
The farmhouse has changed hands a few times but it ended up being owned by Jill Falkingham and Paul Thorp, who told Channel 4 documentary The Pennines: The Backbone of Britain what living in the middle of a motorway was like.
Paul said: “It’s just like any other farm really. You’ve got to know your land, know your job and plan around it. The only thing is, we’ve got six lanes of traffic through ours. It throws up its challenges, it’s very unique.”
On the subject of those challenges it turns out that sheep wandering onto the busy roads is one of the main issues.
They may be woolly but they’re very much not jumpers and would be in quite a pickle should they come face to face with an oncoming car.
Apparently you can hardly hear the noise when you’re inside, though you often have to pop out to catch an escaping sheep (Channel 4)
Paul explained that he’s had calls at various times of the day, even in the abominably early ones, telling him that one of his sheep is loose and he needs to go and get it.
He said: “I can’t tell you the number of times it’s happened. My phone will go at 2.00am and it’s somebody from the highways agency.
“‘There’s a sheep on the loose on the motorway – can you go get it?’”
