Heath Ledger's father has revealed details of the star's final conversation with his family. "His sister was on the phone to him the night before telling him not to take the prescription medications with the sleeping tablets," Kim Ledger told the Daily Mail Australia. "He said, 'Katie, Katie, I'm fine. I know what I'm doing.' He would have had no idea."
Heath tragically passed away on 22 January 2008, aged just 28. A toxicology report released after his death revealed he had died from "acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine".
Heath Ledger's parents Kim and Sally with his sister Kate
Since the star's death, Kim has been working hard to raise awareness about prescription medication misuse – especially in the family's native Australia.
"It was totally his fault. It was no one else's," the 66-year-old said of his son. "He reached for (the pills). He put them in his system. You can't blame anyone else in that situation. That's hard to accept because I loved him so much and was so proud of him."
He continued: "Heath mixed a couple of drugs together with sleeping tablets and he's gone forever. That's something we just have to deal with.
The actor tragically passed away on 22 January 2008
"He was a young guy that travelled all the time for work. Even as a two-year-old, he hardly ever slept. He was trying to work and travel and do everything in a short space of time."
Heath had previously revealed how his mentally-draining role in The Dark Knight playing The Joker – "a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy" – had taken its toll on him, and, as a consequence, he found it difficult to sleep. "Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night… I couldn't stop thinking," he told the New York Times in 2007. "My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going."