‘I Feel Hopeful & Grateful’: Michelle Williams’ New Interview
September 16th, 2009
More than eighteen months after Heath Ledger’s death, Michelle Williams admits that dating again is “complicated” in an interview with Vogue magazine, where she opens up about Ledger’s death and the impact it had on her and daughter Matilda.
“I didn’t know what my boundaries were for a long time, which made interviews feel very unsafe,” Williams, 29, says in Vogue‘s October issue.
“I can talk about grief because that’s mine, about single parenting, about trying to balance work and kids. But what I don’t have to talk about is what happened between Heath and me in our relationship.”
She and Ledger, who met while filming Brokeback Mountain, dated for three years before they splitting in August 2007, five months before Ledger died of a drug overdose in New York.
“Brokeback Mountain was an unrepeatable moment in time, a very charmed time in my life,” she tells Vogue.
“I was in love. I was in a movie I was proud to be a part of, and with a beautiful brand-new baby. Everything was good in that moment.”
When he died, she admits, she struggled to cope.
“I was holding it together by a string and a paper clip in the fall and winter. I didn’t know if I could keep it all together… You console yourself by saying it’s all a deepening process. But it’s wired. After the first year, the pain is less intense – it’s less immediate. But the magical thinking goes away too. And that’s a whole new reckoning.”
She adds, “Every time I really miss him and wonder where he’s gone, I just look at her [Matilda].”
Since July 2008 Williams has been dating director Spike Jonze, but she admits it hasn’t been easy.
“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,” she says.
“But, I feel hopeful and grateful. For a while I thought we had lost everything. It makes you want to love better and live better.”
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