Michelle Williams is a national treasure. Over her celebrated 20 years in the business, she's
been nominated for four Oscars, won two Golden Globes and a Primetime Emmy. Although she has
made an unbelievable success in her professional life, her personal life was not always so lucky.
Things became so bad at one point that she stopped believing in any form of a happy ending
and who could blame her after the devastating and unexpected loss of her first love and father
to her daughter Heath Ledger. After his death, Michelle was forced into the role of a single
mother, trying to figure out a way to build up the courage to love again. At times trying too hard,
as some might think she tried to find the love she once found with Ledger in every man she dated.
Today we unpack the details of the love Michelle Williams found in Heath Ledger and how she had to
fight from the ground up to find love again after his death. But before we get started
don’t forget to subscribe to Rumor Juice. Michelle’s first big-screen role was in the
1994 movie Lassie, at the age of 14. The following year, she was emancipated from her parents to get
around strict labor laws to move, by herself, from San Diego to Los Angeles. Luckily, it wasn’t long
until she was cast as wild child Jen Lindley in Dawson’s Creek. Now although most would
be ecstatic to land a job so quickly she admitted that it was an extremely dark time in her life.
“I didn’t have the thing I most wanted, which was respect and a good sense of
myself — I wasn’t viewed as an artist.” She managed to complete her high school
diploma via a correspondence course, but even the distraction of studying couldn’t help her
shake the overwhelming lonely and isolated feeling that encumbered her each day. And,
although emancipation was a practical decision, it left her without a safety net. But luckily
tables were about to turn as she headed into one of the biggest pinnacles of her life.
She was cast in director Ang Lee’s latest film Brokeback
Mountain and it was there where she managed to find joy for the first time, since moving to LA,
as she connected with onscreen partner Heath Ledger. The two hit it off right away,
but it wasn’t until they filmed a scene together that the two connected. During the filming of the
scene Williams unexpectedly crashed a snow sled resulting in her tearing ligaments in her knee.
We wonder if it was Ledger coming to her rescue that sealed the deal for her?
Everyone who worked with them on set has previously spoken about how undeniable their
chemistry was from the get-go. Co-star Jake Gyllenhaal confessed that he remembers when
they were in rehearsals and the two just sat staring at each other with googly eyes all day,
in front of everyone. Michelle has also never been shy to admit that it was
somewhat of the love at first sight incident. She said it in words that we probably couldn’t
have said better ourselves, explaining how their first interaction surpassed all clichés.
“Our initial meeting, the circumstances of how we first met, was cosmic or something,
a lot of things happened at once.” She attributes the speed with which they
moved to a sort of premonition as if deep down they knew that tragedy was heading their way,
so they tried to fit in more than what they could handle at a time.
“It’s a bit like, we had a lot of things to do because
we didn’t have a lot of time or something.” It wasn’t long after they started filming,
that the couple welcomed their daughter Matilda Rose to the world and into their hearts.
Matilda changed Ledger’s perception of the world. She gave him a sense of purpose that
he had never experienced before. The family became everything he valued in this world.
"Family is everything to me — the most important thing I do.
Before, I felt like I was floating through life, like a ghost; I may not have even existed."
And this just made Michelle fall even more in love with him and their life together. At the time,
she even said that the thing she hopes most in the world is that things stay the way they were.
But, unfortunately, that’s not the direction their story took place.
After the honeymoon phase was over things started to change and the couple grew further apart,
finding more and more differences than similarities in each other.
A friend of theirs said that the two grew distant during the awards season chaos that followed their
shared nominations for Brokeback Mountain. It was there when things changed, Heath realized that
they perceive the world differently, he didn’t care about awards and ceremonies the way she did.
During that time Heath also fell victim to the Hollywood party scene. A scene that often involved
cocaine and other drugs. Michelle admitted that in the beginning, she was so in love
that she kind of turned a blind eye trying to ignore the warning signs, but it wasn’t until
Matilda was born that she realized she needed to start re-evaluating their relationship.
Despite Ledger’s growing unhealthy habits the pair also started getting busier at work and when they
threw in a baby in the mix it all just became too much for them to handle. It was then when
Michelle made the hardest decision of her life and decided it was better for them and their
family if they brought their relationship to an end. A close friend of the couple commented,
“I don’t think they fell out of love; it was probably tough love”
And whilst many felt sad for the pair, no one truly believed that it was the end of
their story. Unfortunately, life had another plan for the actor...
Heath Ledger died in his New York City apartment after taking a fatal mix of 6
different prescription drugs, at the mere age of 28 - just five months after he and Michelle split.
Following Ledger's passing, devastated Williams fell under the spotlight, as the media was
intent on knowing how she was grieving. This made the whole process even more difficult.
Williams was forced to ask the media to respect this time and requested permission that she
grieves privately with her (quote) “tender-hearted and high-spirited beautiful little girl”.
As much as Michelle tried she felt utterly incapable of moving on,
struggling to remember where her place in the world was before she met Heath. So after finishing
up a movie she was filming at the time she decided to take a temporary break from acting.
Williams wasn’t the only one that struggled through the pain. Ledger’s fellow co-star and
Godfather to Matilda, Jake Gyllenhaal, also took a huge fall after he learned the news.
It was the first time in his life that someone so close to him passed away.
“It affected me in ways I can’t necessarily put in words.”
But Jake took on the role of Godfather extremely seriously, and immediately stepped
in to help Michelle care for Matilda, who was just 3 years old at the time.
Jake wasn’t the only friend of the actor who came to her rescue during this tragic time. Before the
actor passed away, he wrote a will. But, because it was last updated not only before Matilda was
born but before he even met Michelle, neither of the two appeared in the documents, leaving
the actress and baby Matilda with nothing. So in an act of solidarity and kindness, former
co-stars and friends of the actor, Colin Farrel, Johnny Depp, and Jude Law donated what they earned
for their work in “ The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” the last film in which Heath appeared.
Michelle was grateful for the support in these dark times, but things just got lonelier and
emptier for the actress. She felt an immense amount of guilt for not being able to be there
by his side during what was clearly the hardest time of his life. So in an attempt to get over
these feelings, Williams tried to find shelter in the arms of another love. Some would almost
say she went into an obsessive search to find remains of a love that she once let go.
Williams thought that diving back into the dating pool would have the same ripping-off-the-Band-Aid
effect. She started dating Spike Jonze six months after Ledger's death. The relationship, however,
didn’t last too long once she realized it was far too soon after Heath’s passing.
"The timing was impossible, I thought falling in love again was the only thing that was
going to save me from the pain. This erroneous idea: It just makes things more complicated."
For her part, Williams admitted that she might have been trying too hard to force romance.
During that time of her life, she confessed that she expected and imagined that Matilda would have
siblings that were close to her in age. But the actress couldn’t make it happen and eventually
released herself from that pressure. She then decided to rather take a few years off from
dating and put her focus on her daughter, all while trying to accept and move on...
After being single for a few years, the Dawson’s Creek alum tried her hand at dating once again and
had a fair amount of high-profile relationships with people like Jason Segal, Dustin Yelling,
Jonathan Safran, and Andrew Youmans. Although Michelle tried to hide it, it
was obvious to many that she was still desperate to find a suitable partner for herself and a role
model for her daughter. And after a few dating escapades the actress surprised the world and
secretly married Phil Elverum. Yea…don’t worry you weren’t the only ones that didn’t know who he was.
Only a handful of people truly knew what happened between the two as Williams very rarely spoke
about her relationship with the artist. But it was less than a year later that the couple filed for
divorce. And although they claimed that it was an amicable split Michelle was left alone once again.
And this time she started to fear that she might never find her plus one.
"Everybody is now partnered up and you have to wait for people to start getting divorced.”
Luckily for Michelle, she spoke too soon, because it wasn’t long before she surprised
the world again by making headlines that she and theatre director Thomas Kail were not only engaged
but expecting their first child together. The couple met while they were still in
opposing marriages, but that didn’t stop them from leaving a mark on each other’s hearts.
Seems like you can’t always control the timing of new connections.
Once they got together, Michelle fell fast and hard for Thomas. And after years of being followed
by the media, Williams has made it paramount to keep her personal life a secret. Now although
we don’t know much about the couple, many of their friends have said that it was the strong
feelings they have for each other that helped the pair navigate their imperfect beginning to where
they are now. The pair welcomed their child to the world in mid-2020, and from the glimpses that we
see, it seems as though Michelle has finally found her forever plus one.