A Fairy Tale Gone Wrong

He was a great actor and a doting father. But in his final days Heath Ledger also struggled with drugs and demons – which ultimately tore apart the family that might have saved him

Originally posted Thursday January 31, 2008 12:00 PM EST

"They wanted to stay together, but they just couldn't," a friend says of Ledger and Williams (at a basketball game in '06). Photo by: Lucy Nicholson / Landov

To their neighbors in Brooklyn's cozy Boerum Hill, Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams were just glamorous versions of people everybody knew: a funky young couple living in a renovated row house who adored their little girl. Last summer, the pair of low-key movie stars happily snapped pictures of then-1-year-old Matilda as she was fitted for her first pair of shoes: Mary Janes with tiny Velcro straps. "She was curious about what was on her feet, and...