By ACA Staff
The Nine Network has gained exclusive rights to an eerie video clip of doomed actor Heath Ledger which shows him apparently drowning in a bath — in a dark tribute to the tragic death of singer with whom he was obsessed.
Ledger starred in and directed the rarely-seen video tribute to Nick Drake, the cult British singer-songwriter whose death from a prescription pill overdose in 1974 bore some disturbing similarities to his own.
The eerie black and white video has remained hidden from the public since Ledger’s death last month, but will has been aired exclusively on A Current Affair.
Ledger made the video on a hand-held camera in early 2007 as part of an exhibition celebrating the work of Drake, with whom Ledger said he was "obsessed". It has so far only been glimpsed twice in public, at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival in September 2007 and again in Los Angeles the following month.
Speaking about Drake at the Venice film festival last September, Ledger said: "Nick Drake is a very mysterious figure. I was obsessed with his story and music and I still have great hopes to tell his story one day.
Ledger's clip for the song Black Eyed Dog, titled after Winston Churchill's description of depression as a "black dog", features the late actor in a series of grainy an disorientating shots before apparently drowning himself in a bath.
Black Eyed Dog is allegedly the last song Drake wrote before overdosing on the anti-depressant amitriptyline. He was 26-years-old when he died, but failed to reach a wide audience until long after his death.
Ledger was rumoured to have been planning to make a film biography of Drake.
