Brittany Murphy: “a dangerous downward spiral” may have led to her death

Word is starting to come out now about the last month or so of Brittany Murphy’s life and it doesn’t sound pretty. According to Sharon Waxman at The Wrap blog Brittany had been fired two weeks ago from her recent movie The Caller. No reasons were given for the firing but an insider of another film she was working on, Something Wicked, said that Murphy was barely able to shoot her scenes and would lose her focus in mid-sentence during a take.

“Her husband was her handler, he shuttled her around. She was barely there,” said an individual with knowledge of the production, referring to Murphy’s husband and manager, Simon Monjack.

“She’d go in and out of consciousness in the middle of takes.”

The individual said Murphy’s inability to stay fully conscious caused producers to rewrite her character, a therapist to the two main characters, and her scenes. He said colleagues on the set had presumed she used prescription drugs.

Source: The Wrap

Murphy’s suspected excessive use of drugs has been widely speculated and led to a spoof on a recent Saturday Night Live Weekend Update.