Author Topic: Remember Michelle's Pain  (Read 17449 times)

Offline LauraGigs

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Re: Remember Michelle's Pain
« Reply #40 on: February 22, 2008, 07:33:33 pm »
I just hope the paps/tabloids don't continue to hound Matilda.  Heath and Jake are adults, and although you can't blame them for being bothered by it, they did have some idea of what they were getting into as far as intrusion on their fame.  But Matilda is just a toddler.  I get squicked out visiting any site with pap pictures of her.  I know Heath would hate it.

Offline MaineWriter

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Re: Remember Michelle's Pain
« Reply #41 on: February 27, 2008, 09:00:03 am »
From the Herald Sun, Australia:

Michelle Williams focuses on work after Heath Ledger

GRIEVING actress Michelle Williams is throwing herself into her work after the death of her former partner Heath Ledger.

Williams flew to Perth for Ledger's funeral last month, plunging into the ocean at one of his favourite beaches as family and friends joyfully celebrated his memory.

Afterwards, she returned with their two-year-old daughter Matilda to New York, where she is shooting the film Mammoth.

Her father, sharemarket guru Larry Williams, today said she was focusing on her work.

"She's wrapped herself up in that and is really focused on that," he said.

Williams spoke outside Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court today, where he is fighting extradition to the US for allegedly evading $A1.9 million in taxes between 1999 and 2001.

He at first refused to be drawn on his daughter's realtionship to Ledger, teling the assembled media: "This is a family thing. We all decided to tell everyone in the media 'no comment'."

However he told The Daily Telegraph exclusively that he heard from his daughter occasionally and revealed that she is "focused on work".

As he spoke in Sydney's summer warmth, Michelle and Matilda - her daughter by Ledger - have been spending time together in the snow in the US.

Sharemarket guru Williams was on bail in Australia when Ledger was found dead in a Manhattan apartment last month.

The Brokeback Mountain star was once engaged to his daughter, actress Michelle Williams, and they had Matilda together.

Williams' long-running extradition case was mentioned briefly today, when Magistrate Pat O'Shane adjourned it to August 12.

She was told Williams should by then know the decision of judges in Australia's High Court on his constitutional challenge relating to extradition.

He and two other men - a Hungarian accused of Nazi war crimes and an alleged Irish fraudster - contend magistrates do not have the power to hear extradition applications unless state parliaments pass legislation giving them that authority.

Williams has been in Australia since his arrest in Sydney in May 2006.

He has been on bail and today told reporters he and his partner had been having "a great time" in Australia, travelling around and spending time with "wonderful friends".

While he wants to return to the US to "clear" the charges against him, he said the authorities there had "put a lot of strange demands" on him despite his efforts at going back voluntarily.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23278311-662,00.html
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Offline Fran

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Re: Remember Michelle's Pain
« Reply #42 on: February 27, 2008, 10:44:00 am »
Michelle Williams is said to be "not close" with her father.  I tend to take everything about Michelle that comes out of Larry Williams' mouth with a grain of salt.  To me, it seems that most of the time, he's just stating the obvious anyway.

I am impressed by the fact that Michelle's mother Carla, who apparently is close to Michelle, manages to keep her mouth shut.  To me, she's a class act.

mvansand76

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Re: Remember Michelle's Pain
« Reply #43 on: February 27, 2008, 01:54:58 pm »
Michelle Williams is said to be "not close" with her father.  I tend to take everything about Michelle that comes out of Larry Williams' mouth with a grain of salt.  To me, it seems that most of the time, he's just stating the obvious anyway.

I was thinking the same thing.

And by the way, what a badly written article that is. Talk about somebody rambling on with no clear idea of what the article is about.

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Remember Michelle's Pain
« Reply #44 on: March 07, 2008, 08:22:53 pm »
From The New York Daily News:

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2008/03/07/2008-03-07_struggles_for_michelle_williamsbefore__a.html


Struggles for Michelle Williams, before & after tragedy

Friday, March 7th 2008, 4:00 AM




A heartbroken Michelle Williams gave a wrenching interview about her breakup with Heath Ledger, less than two weeks before he was found dead in his SoHo apartment on Jan. 22.

"I didn't know where to go," she says in the April issue of Elle about the couple's 2007 split. "I couldn't imagine any place in the world that was gonna feel good to me."

Williams spoke to Elle in Sweden, where she was filming "Mammoth." Matilda, 2, was darting in and out of the interview, wanting Mom to chase her.     

"She's bigger to me than any relationship, bigger than the awards," Williams says of her daughter. "She's what came out of it."

The actress admitted she buried herself in work to avoid thinking about the breakup. "When I have too much free time, that's when things start to get a little messy," she said.

Ang Lee, who directed "Brokeback Mountain," on which the couple met, told the magazine: "They were so sweet together. I ran into Heath at the Venice Film Festival, and he told me about the split. I just felt so sad. I didn't know what to say to him. They made a great effort."

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Offline louisev

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Re: Remember Michelle's Pain
« Reply #45 on: March 08, 2008, 12:23:32 am »
Interview in January before Heath's death:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23524595/

‘We just need to go away,’ actress says of period right after breakup
Image: Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger
Mark J. Terrill / AP
Actress Michelle Williams said that after her breakup with Heath Ledger, it was work that saved her time and again.

updated 1:13 p.m. AKT, Fri., March. 7, 2008

NEW YORK - In an interview conducted just days before Heath Ledger’s death in January 2008, Academy Award-nominee Michelle Williams opened up about the pain of their breakup.

The actress moved to Portland, Ore., for a film role following her split with Ledger in 2007. Throwing herself into the role of a woman on the precipice of homeless in "Train Choir" was "a very healing process," Williams told Elle magazine’s April issue.

"(Heath and I) had broken up — way before it became a news story — and I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t imagine any place in the world that was gonna feel good to me," she told the magazine.


Williams took her daughter with Ledger, Matilda, now 2, to Portland as she took on the part in the Kelly Reichardt directed project.

"Right after we broke up, I said, ‘I gotta go do this thing. It’s going to be the perfect place for me, for Matilda. We just need to go away," Williams said. "We made the best friends in Portland. We lived with people, at their house… I just have the fondest memories of being there and playing this lonely, drifting soul."

In telling words, Williams said throwing herself into her acting work, throughout her life, has been a wondrous gift.

"Whatever I’ve suffered, I feel like the work I get to do is an absolute blessing," she said. "Because whatever I feel inside, it has a place to go. It just saves me over and over again."
“Mr. Coyote always gets me good, boy,”  Ellery said, winking.  “Almost forgot what life was like before I got me my own personal coyote.”


Offline Fran

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Re: Remember Michelle's Pain
« Reply #46 on: March 08, 2008, 01:56:35 am »
Thanks for posting the above article, Louise.

BTW, Michelle's name doesn't appear the credits for "Train Choir" AKA "Wendy" over at IMDb.  Maybe it's a very small role.  Still, we'll get to see her in at least three movies:  Incendiary, Mammoth, and, eventually, this one.

Marge_Innavera

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Re: Remember Michelle's Pain
« Reply #47 on: March 08, 2008, 01:09:09 pm »
I just hope the paps/tabloids don't continue to hound Matilda.  Heath and Jake are adults, and although you can't blame them for being bothered by it, they did have some idea of what they were getting into as far as intrusion on their fame.  But Matilda is just a toddler.  I get squicked out visiting any site with pap pictures of her.  I know Heath would hate it.

I'd assume that by the time she's old enough to fully be aware of that, Heath's life and passing will be at least a few years in the past and the paps and tabloids will have long since moved on.

What I'm concerned about (and, I've gotta admit, a bit curious about) is how a parent would tell a child over the years about a parent the kid doesn't consciously remember but whose life has been discussed so publicly. For most people in that situation, any information about the parent would come from family photos, home movies, reminiscenses of relatives and friends, but in this case it would be journalists and fans all over the world.  And really, I don't have any idea how one would handle that.

Offline Fran

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Re: Remember Michelle's Pain
« Reply #48 on: March 13, 2008, 10:38:42 pm »
Here's the first part of the interview with Michelle Williams that's featured in the April edition of Elle magazine.  I read the full article while killing time in a waiting room today, and, I have to tell you, it is a good read.   

BTW, the interview took place three weeks after Christmas, 2007.  Michelle told the interviewer that she and Heath had been broken up for six months.

http://www.elle.com/featurefullstory/13724/michelle-williams-elle-april-2008.html

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Michelle Williams was born with a gift for acting, a love of books, and an acute sense of self. While filming in Sweden in the weeks before Heath Ledger’s death, the Oscar-nominated actress and young mother opened up about life and love, with amazing grace.

By Holly Millea

She stole the keys. She stole the car. She stole into the night that is already morning on the dashboard clock: 3:26 a.m., 01.09.08. It is too late and too early and too soon to tell if Michelle Williams has pushed her luck. “I’ll take my chances,” the actress says, turning the engine over, breathing warmth into her cupped hands. The snow is falling, the digital seconds flashing, the wipers swiping as a man on the radio sings a twangy country tune, “Goodbye ole paint, I’m a leavin’ Cheyenne…,” cutting the cold, sleeping silence of this Swedish industrial town. In the windows of the dark houses, electric candelabra glow, still burning from Christmas nearly three weeks past.

The black iced road glistens, curving this way and that way, down, down, down the mountain, away from the old Albert Hotel, which has opened especially for her. A mansion dating from 1857, it perches on a cliff above Trollhättan, home to a Saab factory, wondrous waterfalls, and the Gõta Ãlv River, where, local legend has it, large trolls live. Literally translated, Trollhättan is Trolls’ Hood, and the residents are not to be taken lightly. In the midst of their watery stomping ground is Mímir’s Well, owned and operated by Mímir, a Norse deity renowned for his wisdom (and a striking resemblance to Kris Kristofferson). It is said that anyone who drinks from his well has the power to see the future. Odin gave an eye for the privilege, and in peering through Time’s keyhole, he never smiled again.

"I’m obsessed with water,” Williams says. “The scene in Brokeback Mountain when I open the door and see Heath and Jake kiss? Everyone was outside and I was in this hallway by myself, and I just kept thinking, I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship.”

An open bag of Veggie Booty sits between the seats. This would belong to Matilda Rose Ledger, age two. She is named after the Roald Dahl children’s classic Matilda—a girl born of beastly parents but blessed with magical powers that make her feel as if she’s “flying past the stars on silver wings.”

STOP THE CAR. STOP THE CLOCK, the song, the snow. Let's go back to the hotel and look through the keyhole from the other side and see things as they were, see them as they were, before what we now know happened.

There in the Albert's cozy, candlelit front room, Matilda, a dark-eyed, blond, bobbed imp, is working her magic, coaxing a serious, bespectacled waiter named Peter into a smile with her impressive vocabulary, impeccable manners, and a few yoga tricks, ending on her back in straddle splits, with her feet pulled up to her ears. It doesn't take a swig from the well to foretell that Matilda is going to be an actress. Or a Cirque du Soleil star. In the wake of applause, she stands, smooths her beige dress over pale pink tights, and asks, “Mommy, will you chase me now?”

“It's not chasing time, Matilda, it's simmer-down time,” Williams says, scooping her up, kissing her forehead. “Come on, you can watch Wonder Pets in bed before you go to sleep.”

Mother, daughter, and nanny have settled into a suite above the sitting and dining rooms in the hotel. The rest of the cast and crew of Mammoth, the movie she is here shooting, are lodged in an adjacent building. Williams has braved Sweden in the dead of winter to film the relationship drama—as dark and disquieting as the mythical environs—opposite Gael García Bernal. “I'm here for three weeks,” she says, adding with a smile, “any longer than that and I'd have to be medicated.” From the top of the stairs, Matilda calls down, “Peter! Peter! Goodnight Peter!”

With Matilda safe and sound asleep, Williams sits in the dining room, where candles burn on every table and every table is empty. Dressed in black jeans, a button-down shirt, and an argyle sweater, she is boyishly slight. Her features—lips, cheeks, liquid brown eyes—are full. She has only one dimple, there on her right cheek, but what the other cheek lacks, this dimple makes up in depth. Her blond hair is short, in what she considers an awkward growing-out stage, and full of bobby pins. “Bobby pins are my favorite jewelry,” Williams says. “There's nothing sexier than bobby pins.” She gasps suddenly. “That moment in Lolita, when Humbert Humbert is driving into the cow pasture and fingering the bobby pin? Goose bumps!” Even now. Smiling, she pulls up a sleeve revealing her goose-bumped arm.

Her smiles come easily but are complicated, never carefree. “I'm always aware of the whole,” Williams says. “I have that feeling inside, like when something really tickles or delights me—it's not singular. I recognize all the awful things in the world, and in spite of them, I can still laugh.” This hyperawareness has come at a price. “For so long, I felt like a walking open wound everywhere I went,” she says. “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?”

Like extrasensory perception, you either have it or you don't. It's a poignant, painful, and appealing quality that cannot be acted. “Your heart just races to her,” says the director Ang Lee, who cast Williams in her Oscar-nominated role in Brokeback Mountain. “I needed that for the part of the dejected wife—the least interesting, dullest part you can imagine. But Michelle in this role—you want to know what happened in her life, clearly a tragic one. You're never told, but you want to find out.”

It was on Lee's set that Williams and her costar Heath Ledger famously fell in love. “They were so sweet together,” Lee tells me in a January 19 interview, three days before Ledger's death. “I ran into Heath at the Venice Film Festival, and he told me about the split. I just felt so sad. I didn't know what to say to him. They made a great effort.”

“It was so heartbreaking to watch that not work out,” says the director Todd Haynes, calling later the same day. The couple took roles in I'm Not There, Haynes' experimental Bob Dylan biopic, with Ledger as one of six Dylan incarnates and Williams as the Edie Sedgwicky socialite Coco Rivington. “You can't fault either of them. Really, two of the most extraordinary people,” Haynes continues. “True artists, naked and stripped-down as they approach their craft. Different people with different temperatures and rhythms, exploring themselves.”

CHECK OUT THE APRIL ISSUE OF ELLE, ON NEWSSTANDS NOW, FOR THE FULL STORY ON MICHELLE WILLIAMS.