Inside Heath Ledger's Sleepless Nights
New York's Washington Square Park is sometimes a haven for the stray homeless to get some shut-eye, curled up on a bench somewhere. For Heath Ledger, it was a place to roam while sleep evaded him.
"He would walk early in the morning – around 6:30 a.m. or 7," says retired city-worker Tony Rivera, 52, who walks his dog in the park each day at that time, "because, he said, he always had trouble sleeping. That's why he'd come out so early in the morning."
Once in a while, Ledger, 28, would watch the early-morning chess players in action – sometimes even joining them. He often talked about his daughter, says Rivera, who struck up a chat with the actor during one of his sleepless strolls. "He said it was a great thing, being a dad."
But Ledger's friendly banter with park locals was always punctuated by one recurring complaint: "He'd say, 'I'm very tired,' " Rivera recalls, "and he looked it."