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According to an extensive New York profile out today, Heath Ledger spent his final days deeply engrossed in researching and writing a script based on the life and death of Nick Drake. In case you missed the whole Drake resurgence of the late `90s (spurred by Volkswagen's usage of his song "Pink Moon" in a now-classic advert), he was an English singer-songwriter who battled insomnia and depression before overdosing in his bed at age 26. Sounds sickeningly familiar, right? According to the piece, Heath's last weeks involved saying goodbye to the Nice Guy character he'd played publicly since the birth of his daughter Matilda and falling into another role altogether: a depressed, masked public figure who, consumed with writing the Drake screenplay, just might have got too close to his subject.

We combed through the lengthy story so you don't have to; here are the takeaways.

· The day after the 2006 Oscars, for which he was nominated for Brokeback Mountain, he told a British filmmaking friend, "'I'll never make another good film again.'" According to the friend, "If this was what happened when you made a good film, he didn't think it was worth it. He found the whole thing absolutely harrowing. I think that after the Oscars, there was a kind of corner turned—and not a very good one."
· According to the magazine: "Todd Haynes remembers how the actor would lean on his fiancée when they were shooting [I'm Not There] in late summer 2006. 'The night before we were going to shoot a scene, he started to have a real panic about it,' says Haynes. "He had to call Michelle in New York, who talked him through relaxation methods to try to get him asleep. He said he was just curled up in a corner holding one of Matilda's stuffed animals, and he slept about an hour and came on set.'"
· After spending a night last summer partying at New York's Beatrice Inn with a friend named Nathan, Ledger and his friend invited two women back to Heath's new apartment on 421 Broome. "Nathan said, 'Heath can't see [the drugs here].' He was making an effort to protect him, and Heath was obviously in a vulnerable state. He said, 'Heath cannot see this stuff, he had problems, he's sober now.'"
· According to the article's author Chris Norris, "[Ledger] might have been better off if he had behaved more horribly, if he weren't so widely adored. An addict's best hope for recovery is being an intolerable asshole when he's using. And to say the least, few remember that kind of Ledger."