
On Heath Ledger's death in January 2008, as quoted in Terry Gilliam on Heath Ledger’s death and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (14 May 2008) http://cma.staging-thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/film/article2431428.ece
Context: We were devastated. We spent the whole day — Amy Gilliam, Nicola Pecorini, the director of photography, and myself — lying flat on the floor. Heath Ledger's dead, and you don't quite get over that. I suppose I'm in an interesting position because while I'm cutting the film I'm basically working with him every day and he's fine; he's in good shape. Ideas are floating around. Then finally we decided, 'OK, let's get three other people to take over the part'. And we were lucky because we have a magic mirror in this movie. Not every movie has a magic mirror. So you can very genuinely say that these other actors are different aspects of the character that Heath plays. And it works. The point was, we've got to keep going. It was a bit like half being there, but apparently on autopilot I can still do a few things.