The British film-maker Tony Scott was on antidepressants and had taken sleeping medication before leaping from a Los Angeles suspension bridge in August but did not have cancer, a preliminary autopsy report suggests.
The LA county coroner's office also confirmed yesterday that Scott's death was suicide, though his motive remains a mystery. A number of suicide notes reportedly contained no details of why the Top Gun director chose to kill himself. The report said Scott's immediate cause of death was blunt force trauma and drowning. Non-toxic levels of the antidepressant mirtazapine and the prescription sleeping pill Lunesta were in his system.
The last person to see Scott alive was a passerby parking his car on the Vincent Thomas bridge over Los Angeles harbour. He saw the director leap into the water just after noon on 19 August. Scott's body was recovered by law enforcement a few hours later. The bridge is a well-known suicide spot whose surface is about 185ft (56m) above the harbour's navigation channel. It connects the port district of San Pedro in southern LA to Terminal Island in the harbour.
Preliminary reports following Scott's death hinted that he might have had inoperable brain cancer, but the director's family denied such suggestions.
Scott, 68, the younger brother of Ridley, also a director and his production partner, had made big-budget features and worked with A-list stars over a long career. Rarely seen without his trademark red baseball cap, he had collaborated with Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, Will Smith, Robert De Niro and Gene Hackman, among others, on action movies and thrillers. Hits included The Taking of Pelham 123, Man on Fire, The Last Boy Scout, Enemy of the State and True Romance.
At the time of his death, Scott was reported to be working on a sequel to 1986's Top Gun, his most successful film at the box office. The director, who was born in North Shields, Tyneside, had reportedly scouted the Vincent Thomas bridge for a planned remake of the cult 1979 comic book adaptation The Warriors.
A coroner's spokesman said a final report was two weeks away.