Results tagged “heathledger”

With Heath Ledger's posthumous Oscar win this past Sunday, his only daughter Matilda has been thrown back into the spotlight. Her mother, actress Michelle Williams, was recently interviewed by the Telegraph in Brooklyn, the borough that mother and daughter are still calling home. In some of her first public statements about Ledger's death, she says she still feels "burned out," hasn't set foot on a film set since last May, finds the Hollywood lifestyle "a hassle," and spends her time these days "cooking, baking, cleaning and sewing." Clearly in no rush to film a big budget blockbuster, she did comment that she'd be "happy making movies for $300,000 for the rest of my life." Don't look for her to have an LA zip code though, she seems content in Brooklyn: "I can handle sitting here chatting in a bar in Brooklyn, that's right up my alley. I just don't want to strap a film to my back - fly all over the world and show up at lots of different places with a different dress and a new hairdo." As for Matilda, her mother has high hopes for her becoming a doctor, though adds that she's "currently more interested in being a cowgirl."

Note to fabulously good-looking, scrupulously healthy restaurant Rouge Tomate (pictured): the Times's Frank Bruni doesn't appreciate your good intentions. He opines, "In addition to a head chef with obvious talent, it employs a nutritionist, who makes certain that dishes have optimal ratios of meats to vegetables and fruits to nuts and don’t traffic recklessly in calories or the wrong fats...While about a quarter of the dishes are knockouts, at least as many are overly calculated and fastidious, suggesting there’s such a thing as too much balance. The same fruity, nutty, seedy notes pop up too often: during one meal I felt tyrannized by pomegranate, antioxidized to a fare-thee-well."

                            

Here are our picks for the top stories that affected NYC and our state this year. It's been a eventful year.

NYC shop Moss has a sort of creepy novelty idea for those in search of the perfect "too soon" gift: Gone But Not Forgotten finger puppets. The commemorative set includes knit versions of six well known names that died this year: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Jesse Helms, Maharishi Maresh Yogi, Yves Saint Laurent, Charlton Heston and Heath Ledger. The puppets portraying those who have passed on will go for 90 bucks, but there are some glaring omissions from the chosen ones...George Carlin, Roy Scheider and Paul Newman, to name a few. [via NewYorkology]

Get ready for some high-profile headlines to be ripped from the papers for Law & Order, starting with tonight's episode about a crane accident. According to the Post, L&O doesn't really deal with "this city's crooked contractors and their shoddy half-built nightmares, sleazy inspectors and falling cranes," it just begins with a crane accident and then the investigation goes in another direction. Meanwhile, over on Page Six there's talk of (sigh) a Heath Ledger-esque Law & Order. They report that the plot "is 'supposed to be about Heath Ledger' and features a male supermodel, played by Ryan Locke, who 'has a great career and gets all the ladies.' Perhaps the eeriest comparison is to Ledger's actual death by overdose when the character 'leaves a club with a girl. They have sex and do drugs, and the next morning, his friend finds him dead.'" Next up: Joshua Walter and Gina Salamino?

Following the death of Heath Ledger, his grieving family was questioned endlessly about the actor's will, which was written before his daughter Matilda was born. Now Ledger's father has publicly declared that every cent of the estimated $20 million estate (originally left to his sisters and parents) would go to Matilda, telling People magazine that was the plan "from the moment my boy passed away." Fox News notes that "Williams' father [Larry Williams, one of the world's best-known stock market traders] has previously challenged the grieving Ledger family to publicly state the value of their son's fortune." Meanwhile, TMZ is reporting that the ReliaStar Life Insurance Company, who wrote Heath Ledger's $10 million life insurance policy is in June of 2007, is "being sued after claiming the actor's death might have been a suicide, even though officials concluded it was accidental. Lawyers for Ledger's daughter say it's a transparent ploy to avoid paying the money."

This summer came news of a Greenpoint bar called Five Leaves opening and being backed by Heath Ledger (and now by his estate). Urban Daddy has the latest, on the day of the unofficial opening, reporting that "the designer is the man behind Moto, Smith and Mills and Tailor ... The end effect is a bar that Thomas Edison might have built for his buddies. The handmade light fixtures are steel and wire concoctions that seem right out of a lab, and the bathroom door is a massive, '20s-era boiler room door. Even the walls are covered in what the owners call steel wallpaper." And coffee and spirits won't be all that's served; expect greenmarket goodies as well (like Sliced Radishes on Toast with Evans Farmhouse Butter). Tonight the place will be serving up friends and family only, and expected to be there are both Mary-Kate Olsen and Michelle Williams (awkward)—the rest of us are welcome to come next Wednesday, and the hours will be 8 a.m. to...midnight?

Though it's being listed under the incorrect address of 419 Broome Street, the apartment Heath Ledger was residing in when he died earlier this year is now on the market. Curbed points out the address is actually 421 Broome, but may have been changed in the listing to keep away any media attention. They also note that it's going for $4,000 more than Ledger paid, at $26,000/month, and the "4,400-square-foot Soho spread" has been "quietly shopped around since February." Since there hasn't been any real interest, Corcoron now has the listing online.

The U.S. Attorney's Office won't need Mary-Kate Olsen to testify because it has closed its investigation into how Heath Ledger obtained painkillers which contributed to his death. Rumors swirled about MKO's involvement and how she would only talk if given immunity, leading her lawyer to proclaim, "Mary-Kate Olsen had nothing whatsoever to do with the drugs found in Heath Ledger's home or his body, and she does not know where he obtained them" and that she had cooperated with the government. A source summed up the feds' interest in the actress to the Daily News, "We don't know where [Ledger] got the other narcotics. No one interviewed suggested (Olsen) gave him the drugs. But (Olsen) may have known where the drugs came from."

UPDATE: Everybody listen up! Mary-Kate Olsen has just issued a statement:

Despite tabloid speculation, Mary-Kate Olsen had nothing whatsoever to do with the drugs found in Heath Ledger's home or his body, and she does not know where he obtained them.

Continue reading "Mary-Kate Olsen Still Mum on Ledger's Death"

Heath Ledger, currently in the spotlight for his role as Joker in The Dark Knight, has also posthumously anchored down his Brooklyn presence in a new nautical-themed bar. The designer behind it, John McCormick, also designed one of Ledger's Manhattan hangouts, the Beatrice Inn.

Today the little movie that could, The Dark Knight, opens on the wings of a cosmic hype that could make it the third biggest box office earner this year.

     

At a press/industry screening of The Dark Knight at the Lincoln Square IMAX last night, the line was already halfway down 68th Street an hour before showtime – and these are the overprivileged industry slobs. It’s going to be pandemonium Friday once the rabid fanboys take over. But you already knew that; the question of the hour is, “Does it live up to the hype?” Well, considering that the anticipation level rivals that of Evangelical zealots craving the second coming, or geeks clamoring for the iPhone 3G, it’s no small achievement that The Dark Knight does – periodically – manage to meet our insane expectations.

The black carpet was rolled out at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square cinemas for the feverishly-anticipated premiere of The Dark Knight. The film's cast and crew appeared at the premiere, but most talk, as it has been for the past since months, was about missing cast member Heath Ledger, whose sudden death in January shocked Hollywood and the public. The film's star, Christian Bale, said Ledger "steals the movie, I'm quite happy to say that he absolutely does."

An “insider” tells the Post that the late Heath Ledger’s ex Michelle Williams is furious with Ledger’s family over the management of his estate. Ledger’s 2003 will, made out before his daughter Matilda was born, bequeathed everything to his father, mother and siblings; Matilda is now considered the beneficiary, but according to the Post, Williams thinks Ledger’s dad Kim will blow his Dark Knight millions before Matilda reaches 18. (Ledger's uncles have claimed Kim Ledger mishandled their own father's estate.) Rumor has it that Williams is so upset that she’s going to boycott the Dark Knight premiere on July 14th.

A brand new full-length trailer for The Dark Knight hit the web today; the last one circulated in December -- just one month before one of the film's stars, Heath Ledger, was found dead. This trailer was originally screened at NYC's Comic-Con late last month, and gave viewers the first glimpse of Aaron Eckhart's Two-Face character. Watch the larger version here.

Word on Heath Ledger's will has hit the newswire, and according to documents filed in Manhattan Surrogate's Court, he had less than $145,000 in New York assets when he died on January 22nd. The figure includes about $100,000 in bank accounts, a $25,000 Toyota Prius and $20,000 in furniture and fixtures.

In 1962, photographer Bert Stern shot a series of photos (2,571 in all) of Marilyn Monroe at the Hotel Bel-Air that are collectively known as “The Last Sitting.” The 36-year-old Monroe was in the darkest period of her life, having weathered two recent divorces, gallbladder surgery and sickness during production of the romantic comedy Something’s Got to Give, from which she was fired and rehired. Six weeks after the Stern photo shoot, Monroe died from a barbiturate overdose in her L.A. home.

Some new details from the ME's office about slain realtor to the stars Linda Stein. Toxicology tests on Stein, who was brutally bludgeoned to death in her Fifth Avenue apartment in October, show that there were "no traces of marijuana in her system," according to the NY Post.

Just a little over two weeks after his death, and as his family prepares to bury him, the NYC medical examiner has given the results of Heath Ledger's toxicology report.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on East 169th St. and Franklin Ave. in the Bronx, an aircraft emergency at Laguardia in Queens, and a power outage on Laconia Ave. in the Bronx.
• The suit about seizing private property for another private owner in the name of public gain will move to the Supreme Court after a 3-judge panel ruled that Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards eminent domain actions were O.K. with them.
• Some subway graffiti suggesting who the real Cloverfield monster is.

Yesterday, Kim Ledger visited his son's apartment on Broome Street. After Heath Ledger had been found dead in a Soho loft last week, mourners have left letters, flowers and other tributes to the 28-year-old actor. The building staff had collected the items and kept them in the basement; the building super told the Post Kim Ledger said the mementos were "beautiful."

A man posing as Heath Ledger's father managed to get free hotel rooms and talk to Tom Cruise and John Travolta after the actor's death last week. The Post reports the "twisted impostor" got Tom Cruise to console him on the phone and almost "got John Travolta to buy him a plane ticket to the United States." Why does this sound like a radio shock jock prank?

After intense speculation about why the masseuse who discovered Heath Ledger's body last Tuesday called actress Mary-Kate Olsen multiple times, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly spoke to reporters yesterday to clear the air. Kelly said, "We believe that of the three phone calls by the masseuse to Mary-Kate Olsen, only one got through. That call was 99 seconds long."

Continue reading "Week Around the -Ists"

Last night, the G'Day USA Australia Ball was held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, concluding Australia Week festivities. But the week held sadness, after Australian actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his Soho apartment on Tuesday. At the ball, Australian Counsel-General John Olsen read an unexpected letter from Ledger's father Kim:

"Heath is, and always will be, an Australian.

Continue reading "Father Remembers Heath Ledger "With His Skateboard, a Canvas Bag and His Beanie""

Yesterday, over a hundred people - made up of "fans, reporters and photographers" - waited outside the Frank E. Campbell funeral home, where the body of actor Heath Ledger had been kept since ME's autopsy. Ledger had been found dead in a SoHo apartment by his masseuse and housekeeper on Tuesday afternoon. The cause of death is inconclusive, but he had a number of prescription drugs in the apartment, many of them to aid sleeping (he had been described as looking tired recently and even told interviewers he had trouble sleeping after filming The Dark Knight).

Okay people, time for your morning update on The Ledge – come on, you know you want it. Even Daniel Day Lewis says there’s nothing else to talk about. (Scroll down.)

Some more details surrounding Heath Ledger's death have emerged, even though the autopsy is inconclusive for the actor's cause of death. Though CBS 2 initially reported that a rolled up $20 bill in Ledger's SoHo apartment had narcotic residue on it and that cops had found unidentified drug packets, the NYPD now confirms that lab tests found nothing to indicate the bill had been used to snort drugs and that no illegal drugs were found in the apartment. There were six types of prescription drugs in the room, including pills to treat insomnia and anxiety.