The legacy of the late Oscar Award-winning film talent Heath Ledger will forever reign from his glowing filmography and cutting-edge roles in some of Hollywood’s most lauded film favorites.
Ledger’s fans and enthusiasts can now add another token of remembrance to that legacy with a newly surfaced diary, which he kept during the development of his last character that many say led to his ominous death: the Joker of The Dark Knight Batman series. In the notebook, which his father can be seen flipping through in the documentary, pages are filled with Batman comic scenes, images of hyenas, playing cards and stills of Alex DeLearge’s character from A Clockwork Orange. “Chaos” is also inscribed in capital letters throughout the diary in green text.
“He pretty well locked himself up in a hotel, in his apartment, for a month or so, to sort of galvanize the upcoming character in his own mind,” Heath’s father Kim Ledger said. “That was typical of Heath on any movie. He would certainly immerse himself in the upcoming character. I think this was just a whole new level.”
READ: Why ‘The Avengers’ Is Better Than ‘Batman: The Dark Knight’
The 28-year-old movie magnate died in 2008 in what was reported by medical examiners as cardiac arrest from prescription drug overdose. Though Ledger had not had any legitimate history of drug abuse, many said his embodiment of the chilling, maniacal Joker character caused him to become an insomniac. He used prescription sleep medication to combat his sleeplessness, and medical examiners concluded that his cause of death was an accidentally overdose on the medicine. On the last page of the diary, “BYE BYE” is written in what Kim Ledger described as the hardest part for him to read of the entire notebook.
See the diary for yourself in a clip from the documentary below.