© 2026 All Rights reserved WUSF
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Our daily newsletter, delivered first thing weekdays, keeps you connected to your community with news, culture, national NPR headlines, and more.

'Reported Fiction' Imagines Ledger's Perspective

Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment in January.  He was 28 years old.
Carlo Allegri
/
Getty Images
Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment in January. He was 28 years old.
/

Esquire magazine recently published a piece detailing the final days of Heath Ledger's life — written entirely from the deceased actor's "point of view."

"The Last Days of Heath Ledger" is a mixture of truth and fiction; writer Lisa Taddeo conducted interviews with people in Ledger's neighborhood who might have seen him in the week before his death — and then made up the rest.

Taddeo, taking on Ledger's voice, writes, "If you force me to make my last weekend a microcosm of my existence, and what my existence means to you, then I'll tell you how it went and who I played. But first things first: It was an accident."

Some readers argue that the article is in poor taste. David Granger, Esquire's editor-in-chief, simply calls it "reported fiction."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags
Thanks to you, WUSF is here — delivering fact-based news and stories that reflect our community.⁠ Your support powers everything we do.