Mini-Me Speaks!

Verne Troyer is finally speaking out about The Sex Tape! And also about Heath Ledger.

And he says his ex-girlfriend, Ranae Shrider, leaked the tape!

No surprise there.

“I broke up with her in the middle of June; it was something probably to do with that. It was basically when she decided to give the tape away. I highly doubt that she thought that would get me back with her. Ransom or something … She’s still in the house,” Troyer says, noting that he’s taking legal action to force her out, but their situation “makes it even harder, to, you know, not strangle her … I saw her when I left today and she was calling me names and stuff. Uh, so I can’t get away from it.”

Troyer was reportedly choking back tears during the entire interview.

Adding to his sadness: he’d been working with Heath Ledger on his final film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

“I don’t believe that he was troubled,” he says of Ledger’s final days working on the movie. “Everyone knew that he had a hard time sleeping and from working in the cold weather in London—we were out in the rain and things like that—so everybody got sick, to a certain extent … He couldn’t sleep because he was so wrapped up in the character of Joker in Batman. He was still going through not sleeping because he was so involved in that. Throughout our shoot it was the same way … He wasn’t, for me, depressed enough to even think about taking his own life. It was an accident, it happened and it’s very unfortunate.”

Verne tells a cute story about Heath:

Troyer insists that despite sleeplessness Ledger was still “upbeat” about his work on Parnassus. Playful even, as Troyer recalls the last time he and Ledger were together: On the cast’s final night of shooting before they departed London for hiatus, the pair shot a scene at a bar where paparazzi loomed out front. Ledger made his way into the crowd unseen to tease the shutterbugs.

“Heath snuck his way out into the crowd without anybody noticing and came right up next to one of the photographers and asked him, ‘Who are you trying to shoot? Who are you trying to get?’”

The photog said he wanted a snap of Ledger, to which Ledger responded, “’Oh, really? That’s cool,’” according to Troyer. By the time the pap could realize it was Heath himself, the actor had disappeared.

“I thought that was classic, just classic and hilarious,” Troyer said.

It’s so sad to me that Heath was so wrapped up in the darkness of The Joker. I guess that’s a risk you run in being a brilliant actor. I can tell you that I never lose sleep at night because I’m so wrapped up in the character of The Evil Beet. When I lose sleep at night, it’s more about things like, “Did I misspell Selena Gomez’s name? Oh, God, I hope not. She’s been on the scene for like five weeks. I should know this by now.” But I suppose to be truly great in a role like that, you have to access some really dark parts of yourself, and I can understand how it could be difficult to exorcise those demons once you’ve rolled out the red carpet for them.

Aw, Heath. You’re missed, sweetie.