The darkness of Heath Ledger’s obsession with Nick Drake
Before his passing in 2008, Heath Ledger had been vocal about his admiration for music, particularly folk genres, with Nick Drake standing out as one of his all-time favourites. In fact, Ledger’s fascination with Drake extended well beyond the music itself, delving into the artist’s pain and personal live — a melancholic aspect of admiration that runs deeper than meets the eye.
Drake was an English singer-songwriter renowned for his softly murmured and mournful compositions accompanied by meticulous finger-picked guitar. He gained widespread recognition posthumously for records like ‘Pink Moon’ and ‘Five Leaves Left’. He tragically passed away in 1974 at the age of 26.
Ledger’s fascination with Drake was a well-documented aspect of his life: he openly expressed his desire to create a biographical film about the artist, and he suffered an eerily parallel fate to the singer. Both deaths, attributed to overdose, are widely believed to have been accidental. “I was obsessed with an artist by the name of Nick Drake,” Ledger said in 2007 at the Venice Film Festival. At the time, the actor was promoting his film I’m Not There, in which he played Bob Dylan.
“I was obsessed with [Drake’s] story and his music, and I pursued it for a while, and [I] still have hopes to kind of tell his story one day,” he continued. “But it kind of died away, faded away, because I…He was a very mysterious figure, and I felt like I would be taking too many liberties.” According to Djimon Hounsou, Ledger’s co-star in The Four Feathers, the actor was always talking about edits he would make to Drake’s songs. His friends also said that Ledger somewhat romanticised Drake’s demise, stating that he shared the singer’s attitude towards having too much to do, but not enough time.
Singer-songwriter Ben Harper also discussed Ledger’s interest in Drake, saying, “It was all about Nick Drake”. He explained: “[Ledger] had every record. He had interviews. He was completely immersed”. Harper – who Ledger reportedly also had plans to start a record label with – once wrote a song dedicated to Ledger’s daughter, who created the song after Ledger requested a lullaby. The record label was intended to be called ‘Masses Music’, but unfortunately, the pair only got around to shooting a couple of music videos together.
A year before his death, Ledger demonstrated his passion for Drake’s work by unearthing a video set to the singer’s haunting track ‘Black Eyed Dog’, a visual piece that has been publicly showcased just twice — once at Bumbershoot and later at a Drake-themed event in Los Angeles. The monochromatic sequence predominantly features Ledger, culminating in a depiction of the actor submerging himself in a bathtub as the conclusion.
Whether an appeal for help or a heartfelt tribute to a song that resonated deeply with Ledger, the film captures an intense undercurrent of sorrow. As Drake’s lyrics mourn, the black-eyed dog “called at my door”, Ledger’s filmmaking distinctly echoes this symbolic shadow — evident in the stillness and silence of the frames, the inner turmoil etched across his face, and, without question, the stark depiction of suicide that closes the film.