And what of claims made by Shrider, like that she nearly drowned the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me star in a romantic bubble bath?

"There's no incident like that. She's coming up with things and telling media anything to make it interesting. I haven't seen everything she's done...The things she says just aren't true," he adds.

Must be awkward, then, considering the former couple still live together.

"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."

But... how would that even work? Anyway, Troyer's pulling through with the help of friends, family and his lawyer, as well as by continued (if "dehydrated") work on films including Heath Ledger's unfinished final project, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Recalling the late actor's troubled time on set ("He couldn't sleep because he was so wrapped up in the character of Joker in Batman. ... Throughout our shoot it was the same way"), a misty-eyed Troyer nevertheless insisted Ledger was not suicidal — anything but, really, with a Ledger heart sketch eventually making the rounds as the default Parnassus crew tattoo. Troyer pointed out his own on his right hand, conveniently obscuring the small Guru Pitka likeness he drunkenly had inked during production on The Love Guru. Thank God those days are behind him.

• Verne Troyer Talks Sex Tape, Heath Ledger's Death [Yahoo!]

A source close to Troyer, 39, says the actor was experiencing "flu-like symptoms."... Adds the source, "He's been working really hard on the film. They just wanted to hydrate him."

A rep for Troyer denied that he was treated for a drug-related problem. "Verne is fine and doing well and is back to work," the rep tells Us.

We wouldn't normally care to speculate about Troyer's potential for relapse here (he underwent treatment for alcoholism in 2006), but with Gilliam and Us Magazine both being who and what they are, we're not exactly choking on our grain of salt. Anyway, didn't new insurance regulations after Ledger's passing require all Gilliam principals to be under strict 24-hour supervision throughout production? And how much water does Verne Troyer really need in a day, anyway?

• 'Mini Me' Verne Troyer Hospitalized [Us]

"Terry's throwing himself into the job of trying to salvage the picture. [He's] trying to work out at this moment how to continue on. Fortunately, because the film deals with magic, there is a way, perhaps, of turning Heath into other people and then, using stills and I think they call it CGI."

Listen, we're not about to string Captain Von Trapp up for not knowing about recent cinematic innovations like color photography, dissolves or green screens. However, it does seem a bit off-putting that he blabbed to People about Ledger's pill-popping final days on set.

"We all caught colds because we were shooting outside on horrible, damp nights. But Heath's went on and I don't think he dealt with it immediately with the antibiotics ... I think what he did have was the walking pneumonia. [Heath] was saying all the time, 'dammit, I can't sleep'...and he was taking all these pills [to help him]."

• Show Will Go On for Heath's Last Movie, Says Costar [People.com]