Celebrities

The coroner’s report for Heath Ledger has been released. The report stated that he died of an ‘accidental’ overdose of six different prescription drugs. Some of the drugs were for treating anxiety and insomnia. There were no traces of illegal substances, according to the report.

The cause of death was “acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine,” a spokeswoman, Ellen Borakove said. “We have concluded that the manner of death is accident, resulting from the abuse of prescription medications,” said the report, which was conducted after the initial autopsy proved inconclusive.

Ledger’s family said his death should be taken as a warning of the dangers of mixing prescribed drugs. “While no medications were taken in excess,” his father, Kim, said in a statement, “we learned today the combination of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath’s accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage.”

In an interview in the New York Times last year, Ledger said that he had taken two Ambien pills to help him sleep. “Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.” He blamed his condition in part on the toll taken by two roles he had recently played, in the new Batman film The Dark Night and the Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There. Two days before his death he had returned to New York from London where he had been working on a Terry Gilliam film, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.

His parents returned to his home city of Perth, Australia, on Tuesday to prepare for the actor’s funeral. They had attended a memorial service on Sunday in Los Angeles. Michelle Williams, his former girlfriend and the mother of the couple’s child, also arrived in Perth yesterday.