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Sunday January 27, 2008

Michelle Williams split from tragic actor Heath Ledger because of his drug abuse, it has been claimed.

Rebecca White, a member of the actor’s “inner circle” believes that Ledger’s former fiancee Michelle Williams was about to serve legal papers demanding sole custody of their daughter, Matilda.

Michelle allegedly ordered the ‘Brokeback Mountain’ star out of their New York mansion last autumn because of his drug problem – which is said to have included addiction to heroin and cocaine.

But Ms White claims Heath’s dependence on drugs only intensified and he was unable to sleep without pills.

As his fears of losing Matilda intensified, Ledger – found dead in his Downtown Manhattan apartment last Tuesday – set up a room in his home which was a shrine to the little girl.

Ledger told friends that Michelle, famous for her role in teen drama ‘Dawson’s Creek’, planned to go to court claiming he was a bad influence on Matilda.

By the time he started work last December in London on his final film, the $30million fantasy The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus, he appeared so ill that his co-star Christopher Plummer said he assumed he had “walking pneumonia”.

But Ms White, 34, who worked as a personal assistant to celebrities who knew Ledger, including supermodel Naomi Campbell and actress Anna Friel, said friends ultimately blamed his demise on the tension over Matilda between him and ‘ straitlaced’ Williams. She said: “Heath believed Michelle was going for sole custody.

“She wanted nothing to do with him and many of his friends believed that in the last couple of weeks that really pushed him over the edge. He was getting more reckless than ever with cocaine and heroin.

“His use of downers – sleeping pills and anti-anxiety pills and antidepressants- was also getting heavier because he needed them to sleep.

“Heath was a very shy, insecure man. But in celebrity circles you need something to ground you, and for him that was being a father and the idea that Michelle might still take him back and they might still be a family.

She added to Britain’s Sunday Mirror newspaper: “Even though he was seeing other women, there was one side of him that still wanted their relationship to work. But there was also the side that depended on drugs because he felt like a fish out of the water.

“He was not the type to have killed himself. The way I hear it, he went out the night before, he was doing cocaine, he wasn’t able to sleep, and the investigators think he woke up, didn’t remember taking sleeping pills and then took what accidentally was an overdose.”

Ledger and Williams first met when she played his wife in Brokeback Mountain – but White claims that from the start it was a mismatch.

She continued: “It was this movie-set romance and Michelle got unexpectedly pregnant. It absolutely would not have lasted if she hadn’t.

“He was still seeing other women. Heath was an Adonis and she was dowdy and not in his league – careerwise or looks-wise – and no one could understand why they got together. I knew Heath used drugs because the first time I met him, at Puff Daddy’s house in Los Angeles, Heath asked Naomi for cocaine. At another party in Paris, Heath took at least six Ecstasy pills, popped them in his mouth all at once and swigged them with a bottle of champagne.

“He was a partygoer and Michelle was quite straight. But when she got pregnant, Michelle was determined to have the baby. Heath wanted to do the right thing and stick by her.”

But Williams was horrified by the company Ledger was keeping.

Ms White said: “Michelle kicked Heath out because he would be showing up all hours of the night with this band of hangers-on and doing drugs.

“Michelle started to talk about going for sole custody. She wanted to be responsible 100 per cent.

“She felt he couldn’t be responsible for the baby because he wasn’t responsible for himself.

“He got deeper and deeper into drugs as his fears of losing Matilda increased.”