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Heath Ledger: 1979 - 2008

Originally posted Thursday January 24, 2008 12:00 PM EST

The aspiring actor (in '95) had "that famous charm," says his first publicist, Matt Heien. Photo by: Newspix / REX

But after his split from Williams, Ledger often struck friends as depressed and dissolute. "He's been down," says one friend. "He's bummed about the breakup." He was recently spotted with model Helena Christensen, though sources say they were just friends and that he was in no rush to get back into a serious relationship. Still, his spirits seemed brightened by a Christmas trip home to Perth. "I had the most beautiful time . . . being able to see all my friends and family," he told one Australian newspaper. "It's really enabled me to be a boy again . . . and feel like I'd never left."

Just three weeks later, Ledger was gone. Friends and family grappled with the loss, remembering a man at once devoted to his daughter and driven by reckless impulses. "I didn't expect this at all; he was so young and he cared so much for his baby," says one friend. "He was a wonderful father, caring and so loving. But he had his vices. He loved life but he tended to go to the extreme." On the night Ledger died, mourners in Brooklyn gathered outside the apartment where he and Williams had lived. Someone placed flowers on the sidewalk out front, where, in happier days, the word "Matilda" had been carved in the cement, right next to a set of tiny footprints.

• By Alex Tresniowski. Ryan Pienciak, Liza Hamm, Tiffany McGee, Lesley Messer, Kathy Ehrich Dowd and Molly Lopez in New York City, Julie Jordan, Oliver Jones, Alexis Chiu, Johnny Dodd, Brenda Rodriguez and Jennifer Garcia in Los Angeles, Louise Talbot in Melbourne and Melenie Ambrose in Perth