The very private Michelle Williams gave a touching interview to Vanity Fair, revealing a secret marriage to musician Phil Elverum and the fact that she never gave up on love.
Tragedy enveloped Michelle Williams’ soul when her husband, actor Heath Ledger, died of a drug overdose in 2008 when their daughter Matilda was two years old. He was only 28.
“I never gave up on love. I always say to Matilda, ‘Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes’.
The 37-year-old actress recently married the singer-songwriter Mount Eerie in an intimate ceremony, surrounded only by family and friends. She has never talked about her relationships in the past, but this time is different, now she finally feels loved by someone who makes her feel free.
“The way he loves me is the way I want to live my life on the whole. I work to be free inside of the moment. I parent to let Matilda feel free to be herself, and I am finally loved by someone who makes me feel free.”
The couple shares the same harrowing story, having lost partners in tragic circumstances. Elverum lost his wife to pancreatic cancer in 2016 when they had an 18-month child. Williams didn’t want to talk about it but the thought that this might help someone made her rethink the situation.
“It’s a very hard thing for me to navigate because my instinct is to keep my life very, very private.”
“But there’s that tease, that lure, that’s like, What if this helps somebody? What if somebody who has always journeyed in this way, who has struggled as much as I struggled, and looked as much as I looked, finds something that helps them?”
The most important lesson Michelle Williams has learned in life is to never accept something that does not feel like genuine love.
“Don’t settle. Don’t settle for something that feels like a prison, or is hard, or hurts you. If it doesn’t feel like love, it’s not love.”
” The Greatest Showman” actress spoke with Vanity Fair about a moment in her life when she needed to speak up and to assume a public voice, pay inequality. For the movie ‘All the money in the world’, Williams was paid less than 1,000 US dollars while co-star Wahlberg was paid 1.5 million dollars, that he later donated to the Time’s Up legal fund. But not until Jessica Chastain tweeted something about it did the story gain momentum.
“I’ve never really been at the centre of something like that, of a news cycle like that, other than, you know, traumatic death.”
Williams was amazed by the power generated by a united group of women.
“I was one woman by myself and I couldn’t do anything about it. But in the wolf pack — the phrase Abby Wambach uses — things are possible. And that’s really what it took: somebody who was at the head of the pack, Jessica Chastain, pulling me up with her, and then all these other women surrounding me, teaching me.”
“Women have to be watchdogs for each other. A great change has come, but if it is for me or just within my industry, it won’t be enough. Women must recognise what power we have and where — however small and dull it might feel — and use it to advocate on behalf of others for the betterment of us all.”
