From the Sydney Morning Herald. Alert readers will pick up on what I consider some erroneous information. Oh well...
Alone again, naturally
April 21, 2008
A tragic tale brought them together but real-life tragedy tore them apart. Now Michelle Williams must face up to a future without Heath Ledger - and is doing it the way she knows best. Alone.
The girl from country Montana who left school early, divorced herself from her parents at 15 and scratched out a living after fleeing to Los Angeles to follow her dream, is on her own again.
It's a theme that has run through her life. This time, though, she is rich, famous and a mother, but racked with a pain still raw from her ex-lover's lonely death in a Manhattan apartment last January.
She summed up the agony simply, soon after Ledger's accidental overdose of prescription drugs: "My heart is broken."
This week she is inevitably thrust back into the limelight once more as her latest movie, Deception - filmed before Ledger's death at 28 - goes on worldwide release this Thursday.
But this time there is no globetrotting media whirl, no skipping around the world, smiling for the cameras and telling everyone what a delight it was to work with the cast and crew.
Instead she will be alone at home with their daughter Matilda - a treasured reminder of the man who slipped into her life and transformed it before slipping away silently forever, in the dead of night.
Just two years ago it all seemed so different, although it must feel like another lifetime to Williams. The cuddling couple were the toast of Hollywood: showbiz royalty, second only to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie - but with more acting credibility.
They had plaudits from the critics, awards in their back pockets, youth, good looks, bright futures and a beautiful new baby daughter. As she said herself back then: "It's hard to imagine things really getting much better."
They met on the set of Brokeback Mountain, the doom-laden tale of gay cowboys where the couple played on-screen husband and wife. While the characters' lives are wrecked by Ledger's sexual confusion, the real-life attraction between the two was immediate and clear.
"That memory of when I first met him and first saw him is so dear and personal that I don't want to give it away and I don't want to lie about it," she said at the time.
"It's tricky because you're talking about someone you love, so you want to bubble over about it. But it is very vivid in my memory and I just want to keep it in my memory."
Almost overnight, though, she later admitted, she felt as if she and Ledger had met before and known each other for years.
"The more I know him, the more I have a sense of a deeper past than two years together," she said.
"I don't know - I feel like a split cell when I'm with him. It's weird, really."
The romance didn't go unnoticed by their co-stars on the movie. "I remember being in rehearsal and the two of them had googly eyes with each other," Jake Gyllenhaal said of the couple. "There were sparks immediately," added Anne Hathaway. "It was adorable."
By the time the movie finished, Ledger and Williams were not only an item but parents-to-be. By the time it premiered, Matilda had been born and they were both nominated for Oscars.
"It will be forever special because of meeting Heath and having Matilda," she admitted. "It is probably not often in your lifetime that you are part of a film that means so much to so many people."
For both of them it had been a long journey - but one that had finally led to success and happiness at a young age. Williams was just 25 when Matilda was born, Ledger only 26.
Like Ledger - who had left his family home in Western Australia to head east to become an actor, leading him eventually to LA - Williams had given up everything to pursue her acting dream. "It was there like the air," she said. "Like breathing or drinking water. It was just something I always wanted."
At the age of 15, for "legal and emotional reasons", she won a court's approval to officially separate from her wealthy parents and struck out on her own.
"I was stubborn, I wanted to be alone," Williams explained. "I wanted to do everything by myself.
"I was living in LA, going to auditions, getting little jobs every now and then, living in this town of predators. I was bull-headed. I didn't know there was anything to be scared of. It was the brazenness of youth.
"I was a stubborn, wilful 15-year-old who got her way. Who wouldn't want to live on their own when they're 15? I marvel that things have turned out as well as they have, not just the success but the survival. That's what I'm most proud of."
The bit parts finally led to a regular role in the teen TV drama Dawson's Creek that first brought her fame, but it wasn't until she moved into art house movies and theatre that she began to be taken seriously.
She admitted it was hard: "I've kept my nose to the grindstone and kept working. I feel like a plough horse - diligent, dedicated and tireless."
The workload paid off - at 25, after 10 years of working solidly, she had a CV and reputation to match many veterans and that experience won her the role in Brokeback Mountain ... and her meeting with Ledger.
She instantly saw a kindred spirit, a youthful overachiever who was taking on the world on his own terms.
"We talked about that a few times," she said once. "About how it can be difficult when you start acting as young as we both were. But I don't regret it. I learned a lot."
For Williams the transition from single gal to one-half of an engaged couple in the media spotlight was life-changing.
"I like to take a lot of stubborn pride in my independence," she said at the time.
But from being a capable independent soul, she was now under the protection of the fiercely private Ledger. When he wasn't hugging Williams protectively in front of the cameras, he was standing in front of her, clearing a safe pathway for her through flash bulbs and life.
The couple became notorious with paparazzi for not playing the game, refusing to pose and angrily lashing out. The one time they did play to the cameras - on a red carpet in Sydney - they were rewarded with a spray from water pistols from fed-up photographers.
They fled the goldfish bowl of life at their beachside home in Bronte in Sydney's eastern suburbs for the anonymity of New York's Brooklyn and faded into the background of day-to-day NY life, apparently blissfully happy.
"[He's] a really excellent, devoted, diaper bag-toting father," Williams said of Ledger, while he added: "I love my neighbours - we're left to live. I like everything. I adore it."
But, while Ledger could protect his new family from the evil paparazzi, he could do nothing about the demons inside himself.
Just months after they both missed out on Oscars, Williams was reportedly trying to persuade Ledger to seek help for a growing drink and drug problem. When that failed they struggled on until Williams could take no more and they split.
Ledger spiralled out of control in a descent that eventually led to his death. Williams was in Sweden working on another film, Mammoth, when she heard the news.
Devastated, she flew back immediately and later attended the seaside memorial service at Cottesloe Beach in Western Australia which celebrated the star's life and concluded with a fully dressed, high-spirited dunk in the ocean.
Williams paid tribute to the star after his death, saying: "He had an uncontrollable energy. He buzzed. He would jump out of bed. For as long as I'd known him, he had bouts with insomnia. He just had too much energy. His mind was turning, turning, turning - always turning. He had a talent for everything that he put his mind to. He didn't know limits."
Just days after the star's death, an interview pre-dating the tragedy was published about her split with Ledger but which contained an ominous prediction of her future.
She told the UK's Wonderland magazine: "For so long I felt like a walking open wound everywhere I went.
"There's this Joan Didion quote about being afflicted from an early age with a presentiment of loss. Did I come into the world like that? Or was I kind of gifted that?"
She added: "Obviously, so much has changed for me in the last few months that I don't really have an idea of what my life is going to be.
"'I thought I knew certain things and it turned out that I didn't, so I don't really try and anticipate so much any more. I'm not making any bets on the future."
She added: "I love domestic life. There's been a lot going on in my personal life and part of me is ... I don't know. I shouldn't talk about it, but it's like I'm re-emerging back into the world or something."
And as a plus, she had said, there has been less attention from the paparazzi.
"When you're in a relationship with somebody who is also a public personality, then it doubles the attention from the media," she said.
"When you minus that equation, it's just less enticing. That's been a real bonus. It's the plus side of the break-up for me."
The silver lining didn't last long, though. Ledger's death has only increased press interest in her to levels even beyond that when their relationship was alive.
For now, though, Williams is focusing only on herself and her daughter.
As she once said: "It's me, the baby and the breast pump ... I like to do things for myself, by myself."
Michelle Williams is alone again.
Deception, starring Williams, Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, opens on Thursday. It is rated R.
Source: The Sun-Herald
This story was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/04/19/1208025541065.html
Topic: Heath Ledger - News Accounts (Read 1277659 times)