Just came across this:

WOW

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7203797.stm

:(

OMG!!!!! :o

Yup......... :o

:yikes: Just read that on the Beeb!!!

Can't believe it! :dohh:

Just seen it on the news :( Gutted.

Terrible terrible. His poor two year old daughter too....

Hate to be ignorant but I did not even knwo who he was :unsure:

Neither did I , and havent even seen Brokeback Mountain !! :shrug:
Not my cup of tea really by the sound of it.

Wow!... I'll comment more once read but just seen the news from this thread..

Shocking news...

The new Batman Movie was already completed it seems.

Still it sure sucks for his young daughter.

In a bit of sad irony, the movie he hadn't finished shooting on yet was the new Terry Gilliam film. Once again one of Terry's films is having a tough time getting finished.

It's such a shock, almost like when River Pheonix died- you just didnt see it coming :o :(

Huge condolences to hisfamily, and especially his daughter. What a waste of a fine talent :(

:o

May his soul rest in peace - such a fine actor, he was.

This reminded me to River's death as well, although I was still a toddler at the time.

I'm not old enough to remember River Phoenix's death, but it does kind of feel like that. A supposedly clean-living actor dying from a drugs overdose (suspected cause of death in the case of Heath Ledger) and such a talented actor too.

I really hope the new Batman film is good so it's a good testament to his talent :(

Glad I wasn't the only one. I only know cos I saw the news. And I do not follow Hollywood and actors at all, utterly useless. I only realyl get to see films once they are on Tv or video and we don't bother with that much. I'm quite knowledgeabel on obscure horro flick actors mind. :lol:

:( First thing I heard when alarm went off at 7.30 this morning. Such a terrible waste of a young life. An american correspondent was talking to GMTV this morning, who knew him very well....he said that mostly when you met Heath he was a lovely warm friendly and humble young man...but on occasion when they met he would be quiet and distant and could even completely blank you.. The correspondent thought during those times, that something 'wasn't quite right' and wondered if he was 'under some influence' as the change in character was worrying. :(

:( you've got to feel sorry for his family though, as there's all sorts of speculation going on in the media as to the cause of his death - probably the last thing they need :shrug:

its a shame when people young die, but it happens every day around the world. i find it difficult to mourn people i dont know :unsure:

So do I, unless they made an impact on changing the world for the better or something similar.

I saw that too, thought it was a bit unfair of the guy to start rumours!

My dad didn't either, despite the fact that he trawls text on a daily basis!

Heath was great in the Knights Tale :ok:

London's Evening Standard is suggesting that he was very f***ed up, addicted to heroin, reliant on sleeping pills, and that this was being noticed by those around him and beginning to affect the quality of his work. The suggestion is not suicide, but an accidential o/d on sleeping pills (possibly with some other nasty stuff floating around in him too). He called a mate before he went to bed and asked to be rung up in the morning.

Jack Nicholson has said that he told him to watch out.

The death of anyone before their time is tragic - what I find bizarre is how many of these people in the public eye seem to be incapable of making something coherent of what they appear to have that others would love to have (financial security, something interesting to do, the chance to go to great places and meet interesting people).

I guess that because they don't have worry about the daily struggle they have time for existential angst and the time and money for ludicrous substance abuse. Being surrounded by superficiality can't help keep their feet on the ground either.

Have never understood why it keeps going on and on and on.

i guess it's that old saying that money can't buy you happiness. I get the impression that Ledger - and a lot of others in Hollywood - find dealing with fame tough. And i know it's easy to be kind of "aww....diddums...." over it (not saying you are btw), but I don't think we can imagine what it's like to be hounded by papparazzi day and night. I also think we under-estimate the ubiqutousness of drugs in the world of celebrity - I suspect more of them than we realise are probably doing drugs of some type and managing to stay afloat. :shrug:

I am sure that many of that crowd do drugs and manage to stay afloat - that does not really make it sensible or explain why others do drugs and don't.

I also think that there are those who can avoid much of the ravages of the paparazzi if they really want by avoiding being quite so 'interesting'. Much of bleating on about paparazzi comes from those whose relationship with the press is a good deal more simbiotic than they want to accept.

I know for a fact that plenty of celebs who whinge on about 'you don't know what it's like' will telephone favoured agencies and tell the agency that they will be shopping in x shop on Bond Street and popping into y for lunch - then a few 'grainy' shots appear in a magazine and everyone's happy.

I have my ups and downs that must seem incomprehensible to those from the outside. When in a down it seems very real, when out it looks very self-indulgent and avoidable, perhaps that is why one is so reluctant to share it with someone because you are afraid of being told to pull yourself together when you know that's right and would rather wallow for a bit longer.

Life's complicated, but I rather agree that outpourings of 'grief' on such celebrity deaths tend to sit badly alongside similar day-to-day events.

I think you're right and people can go overboard when a celebrity dies, although I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that it's sad for that person's family, or that it's a shock. I don't feel a sense of grief or mourn that person, I just find it sad. However, it's remarkably disproportionate that Heath Ledger gets front page news, when people being killed in wars all over the globe don't :shrug:

As for the culture of celebrity, I'd be the first to bitch and moan about it, and I think a lot of people use the press as much as the press use them. And I think it is possible for actors and actresses to stay out of the press if they want to, and to keep their private lives out of the press (Kevin Spacey would be the best example.) But i got the impression that Ledger was one of those who kept out of the press as much as possible, but found it tough living in Australia. It's interesting to see people coming out now and saying what a mess Heath Ledger was though :unsure:

As for why some people do drugs and some don't? big question, to which there is really no answer....... :shrug:

I've just started a new small-group study titled "The Best Question Ever." It's a Christian-based study, but I think the "question" could be applied by anyone, whether you're Christian or not. The first lesson of the study talked about how, when we make decisions, we often ask ourselves questions ranging from, "How far can I go without getting into trouble?" to "Is it legal?" or "Is it moral?" What they put forward as the best question to ask yourself is, "Given my personal circumstances, is it the wise thing to do?"

I don't know for sure what happened to Mr. Ledger, but many people fall into these traps, because they just don't ask themselves the right questions.

Maybe, but often folks fall into these traps because they are desperate and sometimes incapable of asking themselves such questions. And I am sure some folks do ask the questions and come up with the right answer BUT becuase they are troubled, desperate, mentally weak, depressed or stressed they do it anyway to escape and cope. Whatever gets you through the night as John Lennon said, is alright. if it were so simple that all we had to do was to answer some questions, to which the answer to most was bldiningly obvious anyway, then we'd have virtually zero people doing 'bad' things or not th righ tthing, including drug taking. It isn't that simple though is it.

Yeah. I wasn't meaning to trivialize it as an easy thing. Often, we don't ask ourselves the "right" questions, because we know what the answer is, and we might not like that answer. In a sense, I think it really is that easy, if we thought things through properly all the time. Because, if so, most of us would never get to the point of being so troubled, desperate, stressed, etc. There are things that come along that are out of our control, but a lot of the stresses and problems we have come from poor decisions we made in the past.

I'm not meaning to preach about this, btw. I'm merely offering it as one of the reasons that some people seem to get caught up in these traps, while others, with similar circumstances, manage to avoid them.

Oh yeah, I take your point. And of course if we asked oursleves the right questions all the time and took our own advice we might be better off. Sure some stress and misfortune comes from our bad decisions, but not all of it. Sometimes people are just in a bad situation through no fault of their own- say you have a medical problem that is not self inflicted and you have to decide on what to do, have an op or whatever and things can go wrong. Doesn't mean you made the wrogn choice. Sometimes there is no right or wrong answer or we have Hobson's choice, and often outcomes can be unpredictable. My philosphy is that we have to make a decision and live with it, and sometimes we will make mistakes but we should not beat ourselves up if we did our best in the circumstances.

You do make a good point though about us tryign to ask ourselves questions, and I do think that people are often ill equiped to look at themselves closely adn challenge their own behaviour. There isn't much education in this deaprtment at school, and by the time you are older you have learnt possibly negative behaviour patterns form childhood, your parents and peers. So avoiding the question or answer or having the skills to reason this out in the first place are often missing in many folks, so it is not really their fault that they screw up. It is amazing how difficult it is to recognise and challenge or change your own beleifs and behaviours even if we want to so I personally don't like to be hard on folks in this way. Of course people can try therapy such as cognitive behavioural, but there are problems with awareness and finding out about it, accessing it (very expensive and not easy to get here on the NHS) and being able to stick at it and manage what can be a difficult and demanding process.

Sorry DJ but terrible example of Kevin Spacey. He's been caught in a couple of questionable situations on Hampstead Heath in the early hours, stating once that he was walking his dog - dog wasn't seen at all. :tsk: :tsk:


Celebrities are always having stuff said about them when they die, good and bad. Would anyone care about a report on a 28 year old barman who had been found dead in his flat? Or a 28 year old shop assistant? I thought he was a good actor and remember seeing him in an Oz programme called Roar when he must only have been about 16. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear this but I'm more concerned about the apparent suicide ring in Bridgend. 8 people have killed themselves and some sort of pact is suspected. That to me is a tragedy.

yeah, i was reading about that earlier - that's just tragic :( I vaguely remember it being mentioned a year ago or so when 3 of them had killed themselves, but now it's 8 - and all by hanging too :( There's 2 more who have tried in some way as well :shrug:

I really hope it isn't some sort of internet cult, but considering that there's pro-anorexia groups and stuff like that, it wouldn't surprise me :(


ps. Didn't know that about Kevin Spacey :blink: what I kind of meant was that he doesn't talk about his private life in interviews, just focuses on the films.

I was looking at a classmate's blog a few minutes ago, and that person posted an article about Brokeback mountain - she didn't seem to be aware of Heath Ledger's death as he wasn't specifically mentioned in it. I then saw that someone dropped a comment on the article so I read it. That person put something like "XD Da guy in da bej koat died a fw dys ago - ovrdoooooooooooooooose! roflmao!!!!". I can't help but feeling enraged towards such despicable attitude within my school. Do they not have any sense of respect? :(

I think Heath kept himself out of the papers to be honest. And it is bound to get more attention because he is a celebrity, look at the whole Kylie saga for instance. It may not be right but it happens.
I just think it is tragic for someone so young and talented with the world at their feet to die so young. And we still don't know what happened so shouldn't judge.
It does annoy me though that it could not have been a whole host of others : Hilton, Winehouse, Lohan, Spears, Docherty to name but a few who seem determined to combust.

I don't think it's fair to wish it on one of them instead. They are all troubled in their own way, and all have their own stories and reasons just like Heath Ledger did. Anyway you can't kill fo Amy Winehouse becuase she is a vocal genus. :bow: Paris Hilton however is just a tlentless hanger on with a rich family who funnliy enough have left most of their dosh to charity. Good call :ok: :lol:

Sorry but I just hate seeing those plebs every day in the papers!

I was so shocked when I heard this, it was a real surprise but it's a shame because he was fine talent and I really did think he may have gone on to be a great actor.....