Los Angeles, Jan 20 (IANS): Hollywood star Andrew Garfield opens up about the death of his former co-star Heath Ledger, just days before the anniversary of his fatal drug overdose.

The 38-year-old actor was discussing the topic of mourning when he mentioned Ledger, who died of a drugs overdose in 2008 while the pair were in the middle of filming 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus' together, and is determined to "keep his spirit alive."

He said: "When anyone dies, we want the beauty of keeping their memory alive by talking about them and by repeating stories over and over again. I think especially with someone who died so young — I remember feeling it with Heath. He died in the middle of a film that we were making together. And also he was just obviously such an incredible artiste and a gift to the world."

Garfield played Anton in the Terry Gilliam–directed film alongside Ledger as Tony Shepard and following Heath's death other stars such as Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell joined the cast to film Heath's remaining scenes, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

Garfield then went on to claim that the same notion applies to late 'Rent' composer Jonathan Larson, who suffered a fatal aneurysm aged 35 in 1996 and was played by Andrew in the 2021 musical biopic 'Tick, Tick,...Boom!'.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, he added: "I think the same goes for Jonathan. It was like the amount of people that want to keep his spirit alive enabled us to get all of the information and all of the subjective experiences that people had with him and I love that."