Heath’s dad blames son for death
“It was totally his fault,” Kim Ledger, a businessman from Perth, Australia, said about the death of his son Heath Ledger in 2008. Heath, who was awarded an Oscar posthumously for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight, died of an accidental overdose.
“It was no one else’s—he reached for them (pills). He put them in his system. You can’t blame anyone else in that situation,” Kim said in an interview with the Daily Mail Australia.
Heath was found dead in his apartment on Jan. 22, 2008 after allegedly consuming a cocktail of oxycodone, diazepam, hydrocodone and doxylamine.
Kim was asked about Heath after a recent report revealed that one in five Australians take opioid at least once a month. Opioid is a pain reliever. Oxycodone and hydrocodone are examples of opioid. “That’s hard to accept because I loved him so much and was so proud of him,” said Kim. “His sister was on the phone to him the night before telling him not to take the prescription medications with the sleeping tablets.” Heath, at 29, died at the peak of his career. According to the Australian survey, most of those who pop painkillers are people with busy schedules. Kim said Heath fit into the category. “Because he was travelling a lot, he would pop in to a doctor. In the case of someone with a higher profile it’s often a case of ‘what do you want’ instead of ‘what do you need’. There’s so much pressure on them to perform so even though your body is telling you that it’s not good and needs time, it’s like ‘just take these painkillers and keep going,’” Kim bravely admitted to the publication. “That was the case with Heath. He had to be back on set to finish (the next day). They were doing night shoots in the freezing cold and he had a weak chest anyway. He’d caught this (cough) and just couldn’t shake it but he thought he had to because he wanted to get the movie done,” said Kim. But he did not indicate if the movie was The Dark Knight for which Heath won multiple awards.