Terry Gilliam remembers Heath Ledger

"He died halfway through the film I'm currently making, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. We had finished shooting in London on Saturday night. On Sunday, I went to Vancouver to prepare for the next stage and Heath went to New York. He was supposed to be turning up in Vancouver on the Friday. On Tuesday he was dead.

None of us could deal with it. It was impossible - that was the problem. It was absolutely impossible that this could be a fact. But there it was. I was working in the art department when I heard the news, and we stayed there all afternoon. At sunset, thousands of ravens flew over the window and I thought: those are the ravens from The Brothers Grimm, and they are all going to salute Heath.

In terms of his acting, it still rankles with me that he's dead because he would have been streets ahead of anyone else in his generation. He just kept getting better and better. He was fearless. On Parnassus, he was improvising all the time and it was better than what we had written. I don't normally encourage that kind of improvisation, but in a sense I felt Heath was writing this film. He was an incredibly funny performer when he wanted to be - his comic timing was just extraordinary - and then he could break your heart the next minute.
When he died, there were all these nonsensical stories coming out about Heath Ledger, James Dean and River Phoenix, all destroyed by the system - but that's bullshit. What happened was an absurd accident. I still don't understand it. I know he was exhausted - the last thing he said was that he was so tired and just wanted to sleep. You actually think at certain times angels come down to earth and Heath might have been one of them. And then he's gone and you think: this is all wrong, all the other people should be dead. He should be leading us all into a wonderful world of adventure". Source: www.guardian.co.uk

"Now that Heath Ledger has been posthumously nominated for a Golden Globe, there's maneuvering behind the scenes as to who will accept the award should he win.

"Kim desperately wants to do it," one cognoscento tells us of Heath's father. "But the studio and the producers would rather have Michelle receive it on behalf of Matilda" - the couple'sdaughter.

Some Hollywood insiders have speculated that the foreign journalists who decide upon the Golden Globes choose some nominees based on their attractiveness and star power, to goose up their televised awards show's ratings. Michelle Williams, who broke up with Ledger four months before he died in January, is a lot purtier than the senior Ledger, who accepted an "Aussie" award for his son last weekend.

But a friend of the family tells us, "Why would Michelle be involved? She had nothing to do with the movie. They weren't even together when he passed away. Would you have your ex-wife accept your award? And they weren't even married. [Director] Chris Nolan or [star] Christian Bale would make more sense. Michelle makes no sense. It's like those rumors that she would go to the premiere of 'Dark Knight.' That was never in the realm of possibility." Source: www.nydailynews.com