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Jan 23, 2008 07:10 AM ET
- by Ken Fox
Not long before 3:35 pm on January 22, 2008, the short life and promising career of actor Heath Ledger came to a sudden, tragic end. It was around this time that Ledger's housekeeper and his masseuse discovered the body of the Australian-born actor in the bedroom of the Broome Street apartment he'd been renting in lower Manhattan. Ledger was not yet 29 years old.News of Ledger's death came as a terrible shock to nearly everyone, even though it now seems the low-key, Oscar-nominated actor had been privately battling his own demons for quite some time. His passing is the terrible surprise ending no one saw coming, an abrupt finale to a life and career that seemed to be all about the unexpected.Born and raised in Perth, Australia, and named after the darkly romantic anti-hero from Wuthering Heights (he has a sister named Katherine), Ledger left school at the age of 17 to pursue a career in acting. He eventually landed a role in Blackrock, a small independent feature about teen rape, fo...
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When Jason Isaacs first comes on the phone, he mentions that he is covered in blood. Sounds like an interesting — but not atypically brutal — moment is in the works for Showtime's Brotherhood (Sundays at 10 pm/ET), where he plays prodigal hoodlum Michael Caffee, MIA for seven years and now back home in Providence, Rhode Island, to reclaim his turf, all the whole trying not to sully his legislator brother's political profile. But it turns out that Isaacs — whom you know from such film fare as The Patriot (he popped Mel Gibson's son) and the Harry Potter series — has his hands dirty for a diffe
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He's destroyed New York three times — first by aliens, then by a giant lizard, and now with a massive tidal wave — but Day After Tomorrow director Roland Emmerich swears he doesn't have a grudge against the Big Apple.
"I think New Yorkers should be proud that their town plays such a big part in so many movies," the German-born filmmaker says. "And after 9/11, I love seeing New York onscreen even more than before. We discussed beforehand whether it would be appropriate to use New York in this movie, but since it was a natural disaster we felt it would be okay. Also, we were very sensitive about what we did. For example, the Statue of Liberty would have fallen over if that much water hit it, but in the movie it remains standing."
Besides, it's not like New York is the only city that's menaced by out-of-control weather in the film. Scotland turns into an arctic wasteland, giant chunks of hail rain down on Tokyo and, most impressively, Los An
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