Heath Ledger, actor, is found dead at 28
Heath Ledger, the Australian-born actor whose breakthrough role as a gay cowboy in the 2005 movie "Brokeback Mountain" earned him a nomination for an Academy Award and comparisons to the likes of Marlon Brando, was found dead Tuesday in an apartment in New York with sleeping pills near his body, the police said.
The police said Ledger, 28, was found naked on the floor near the bed in an apartment in SoHo that he had been renting. The chief police spokesman, Paul Browne, said the police did not suspect foul play.
"There was no indication of a disturbance," he said, adding that there were no signs that Ledger had been drinking. Nor were any illegal drugs found in the loft, which neighbors said Ledger had occupied for several months.
Police officials said that a bottle of prescription sleeping pills were found on a nearby night table, but that they did not know whether the pills had anything to do with Ledger's death. Officers who checked the apartment found other prescription medications in the bathroom. A spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office said an autopsy would be conducted on Wednesday.
Browne said no obvious indication of suicide, like a note, was found in the bedroom.
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Ledger, who became one of Hollywood's hottest young stars
Ledger, who became one of Hollywood's hottest young stars with "Brokeback Mountain," had become a familiar figure in the neighborhood — and something of a fixture in gossip columns — since moving there after he broke up with the actress Michelle Williams. He had clashed with paparazzi in Australia and had partied in New York, but unlike some stars, he was not remembered as a difficult celebrity.
"He was always really polite and nice," said Paul Sevigny, an owner of the Beatrice Inn, a West Village club that Ledger frequented. There is no shortage of problem-causing partygoers in New York, Sevigny said, "but he certainly wasn't one of them."
The police first said that the apartment, at 421 Broome Street between Crosby and Lafayette, belonged to the actress Mary-Kate Olsen, one of the waiflike twin stars of "Full House." Later Browne, the police spokesman, said it was not Olsen's.
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