THERE is a scene in the new Hollywood blockbuster Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke finds impossible to watch without shedding a tear.

Tears rolled down her face when she shot the scene. Again in the quiet and darkness of the editing booth.

The emotional trigger has nothing to do with the storyline of Twilight or the acting by the young cast.

The scene takes place in a rugged, forest region of Oregon in the US north-west and it was while scouting the location on January 22 that Hardwicke heard her beloved friend, Heath Ledger, was dead.

"We were in a van scouting," Hardwicke, her eyes moistening again and hands trembling slightly, told AAP during an interview in a suite in Los Angeles' Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

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"Someone's phone rang. They answered it and I instantly realised something was wrong with the reaction.

"It was very strange. The person said: 'OK, I won't say anything'.

"I said: 'What was that about?' and they said: 'We don't even know if it is true. There's rumours Heath has passed away'.

"Then one second later my cell phone rang and it didn't stop ringing."

Hardwicke, a 53-year-old California director whose breakthrough was the 2003 independent drama, Thirteen, cast Ledger as the lead of her 2005 film, Lords of Dogtown, set on the Los Angeles beaches of Santa Monica and Venice.

The director soon received confirmation the rumours were true.

Ledger had died from an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers and anti-depressants in his Manhattan apartment.

"Everybody who worked on Dogtown called because they all loved Heath," Hardwicke said.

"To all of the kids, Emile Hirsch and Victor Rasuk, Heath was their mentor. They all freaked out beyond despair.

"For me, I can't really watch the one scene in Twilight where I received that call.

"That's where I heard that news. It is my one little thing. My moment.

"To hear about someone you love, someone so magical, passing like that, was just crushing."