Michelle Ingrid Williams (born September 9, 1980) is an American actress. She began her career with television guest appearances, and made her feature film debut in Lassie (1994), which earned her a Youth in Film Award nomination. She gained wider recognition for her role as Jen Lindley on The WB television series Dawson's Creek (1998–2003).
As a child, Williams kept to herself and was self-sufficient; as she has said, "I was really secretive with my parents and I think I sort of continued that... I found that by keeping to myself I got on OK. I don't know why."[10] When Williams was nine, her family moved to San Diego, California.[7] She became interested in acting at an early age when she saw a local production of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.[11]
Williams' first screen appearance was as Bridget Bowers, a young woman who seduces Mitch Buchannon's son, Hobie, in a 1993 episode of the television series Baywatch.[12][13][14] The following year, she made her film debut in the family film Lassie, about a young boy's (played by Tom Guiry) bond with the titular dog. Williams played the love interest of Guiry's character, which led Steven Gaydos of Variety to take note of her "winning perf".[15][16] She next took on guest roles in the television sitcoms Step by Step and Home Improvement, and appeared in the brief part of Sil, a character played in adulthood by the actress Natasha Henstridge, in the 1995 science fiction film Species.[17][18][19]
By 1995, Williams had completed ninth grade at Santa Fe Christian Schools in San Diego.[20] However, she disliked going there as she did not get along with other students. To focus on her acting pursuits, she left the school and enrolled for in-home tutoring.[21][22][10] At age 15, with her parents' approval, Williams filed for emancipation from them, so she could better pursue her acting career with less interference from child labor work laws.[23][24] To comply with their guidelines, she completed her GED through correspondence in nine months.[22][11] She later regretted not getting a proper education.[22]
Following in her father's footsteps, in 1997 Williams entered the Robbins World Cup Championship of Futures Trading which she won by turning $10,000 into more than $100,000. With a return of 900%, Williams is currently ranked as the third highest winner of the competition since it began in 1984.[25][26]
Career
1996–2000: Dawson's Creek and transition to adult roles
After relocating to Los Angeles, Williams lived by herself in an apartment in Burbank.[27][28] Describing her initial experience in the city, she said, "There are some really disgusting people in the world, and I met some of them."[27] To support herself, she took assignments in low-budget films and commercials.[28] She had minor roles in the television films My Son is Innocent (1996) and Killing Mr. Griffin (1997), and featured alongside Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange in the drama film A Thousand Acres (1997).[29][30][31] Williams later described her early work as "embarrassing", saying that she took these roles to support herself as she "didn’t have any taste [or] ideals".[28] At 17, unhappy with the roles she was being offered, Williams collaborated with two other actresses to write a script named Blink, about prostitutes living in a Nevada brothel, which despite selling to a production company was never made.[32][33]
In 1998, Williams began starring in the television teen drama series Dawson's Creek, created by Kevin Williamson and co-starring James Van Der Beek, Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson. The series aired for six seasons from January 1998 to May 2003, in which Williams played Jen Lindley, a precocious and promiscuous New York-based teenager who relocates to the fictional town of Capeside. The series was filmed in the small-town of Wilmington, North Carolina, where Williams relocated for the next six years; she preferred living there over Los Angeles.[34] In a review of the first season for The New York Times, Caryn James considered the series to be "pure soap, redeemed by intelligence and sharp writing" and found Williams "too earnest to suit this otherwise shrewdly tongue-in-cheek cast".[35]Ray Richmond of Variety labelled it "an addictive drama with considerable heart" and found all four leads to be "highly appealing".[36]Dawson's Creek was a rating's success and raised Williams' profile,[34] but she found it difficult to come to terms with her sudden fame.[27] Her first film release since the commencement of Dawson's Creek was the slasher filmHalloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), starring Jamie Lee Curtis. The seventh instalment in the Halloween film series, it featured Williams as one of several teenagers traumatised by a murderer.[37] It earned $55 million against its $17 million budget.[38]
Williams credited Dawson's Creek as "the best acting class", but later admitted that she had not been entirely invested in it as "my taste was in contradiction to what I was doing every single day".[17][32][39] She filmed the series for nine months each year, and spent the remaining time playing against type in independent features, which she considered to be a better fit to her personality.[33][39] She found her first such role in the comedy Dick (1999), a parody about the Watergate scandal, in which she played a young girl obsessed with Richard Nixon, opposite Kirsten Dunst.[33][28] Praising the film's political satire, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly credited both actresses for playing their roles with "screwball verve".[40] Also that year, Williams played a small part in But I'm a Cheerleader, a satirical comedy about conversion therapy.[41]
In an effort to play challenging roles in adult-oriented projects, Williams spent the summer of 1999 starring in an Off-Broadway play named Killer Joe.[42][43] Penned by Tracy Letts, it is a black comedy about a dysfunctional family who decide to kill their matriarch for insurance money; Williams was cast as the family's youngest daughter. The production featured gruesome violence and required Williams to perform a nude scene, which marked a significant departure from her previous roles.[12] Her socially conservative parents were displeased with it, but Williams has said that she was empowered by the part and found it "cathartic and freeing".[12][33][44] Williams's next role was in the HBO television film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000), a drama told in three parts, each focussing on a lesbian couple in a different time period. Williams and Chloë Sevigny appeared in the second segment, which featured an explicit sex scene between them. Williams agreed to the part after ensuring that the scene was pertinent to the story and that it was not meant to titillate.[44] The critic Ken Tucker gave her segment a mixed review and criticised Williams for overplaying her character's eagerness.[45] When asked about playing a series of sexual roles, Williams said, "'I don't think of any of them as sexy, hot girls. They were just defined at an early age by the fact that others saw them that way."[27]
2001–2005: Independent films and Brokeback Mountain
The British film Me Without You (2001) about an obsessive female friendship featured Williams opposite Anna Friel. Her part was that of Holly, an insecure bibliophile, which Williams considered to be her first role that came closest to her personality.[27] The writer-director Sandra Goldbacher was initially reluctant to cast an American in a British part but cast Williams after being impressed with her self-depreciating humor and finding an "European stillness" in her.[27]Roger Ebert praised her British accent and found her to be "cuddly and smart both at once".[46] Williams returned to stage the following year in a production of Mike Leigh's farce Smelling a Rat.[47] Her part, that of a scatterbrained teenager confused about her sexuality, led Karl Levett of Backstage to credit her for being "a first-class creative comedienne".[48] Also in 2002, Williams played a supporting role in the Christina Ricci-starring Prozac Nation, a drama about depression based on Elizabeth Wurtzel's memoir.[49]
Dawson's Creek completed its run in 2003, and Williams was pleased with how it had ended. She relocated to New York City soon after.[50] She had supporting parts in two art-house films that year—the drama The United States of Leland and the comedy-drama The Station Agent. In the former, starring Ryan Gosling, she played the grieving sister of a murdered boy. Reviews were mostly negative, with The Globe and Mail's Liam Lacey calling it "neither an insightful nor well-made film."[51]The Station Agent, which tells the story of a lonely dwarf (played by Peter Dinklage), featured Williams as a librarian who develops an attraction towards him. Critically acclaimed, the film's cast was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast.[52]
In 2005, she appeared in Imaginary Heroes, about the effect of a son's suicide on his suburban family.[57] It made less than $300,000 worldwide in ticket sales.[58] She co-starred with Meat Loaf, as an impressionable young woman fixated on mental health in A Hole in One, a period piece that was the 2005 feature film debut of Richard Ledes, and was generally ignored.[59]
In a rare comedy turn, she starred in The Baxter alongside writer/director Michael Showalter.[60][61] The film received mostly negative reviews, but critics praised Williams. "Only when Williams is around does the movie seem human, true, and funny: Even in her slapstick there's pain," wrote The Boston Globe reporter Wesley Morris. "She's almost too good: It's not until she's left a scene that you realize the movie isn't working."[62] Released on August 26, 2005, Showalter's movie made $37,000 opening weekend before going on to gross over $180,000 domestically.[63]
Williams gained public recognition for Brokeback Mountain, a film directed by Ang Lee that depicts the homosexual relationship between Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal).[64] Williams plays Ennis' wife Alma, who becomes aware of the true nature of his and Jack's relationship when she sees them in an embrace. After viewing The Station Agent, casting director Avy Kaufman suggested to Lee that he cast Williams as Alma.[65] The film was a box office hit, grossing around $178 million worldwide in ticket sales against its $14 million production costs.[66] The film received eight Oscar nominations, the most for any film that year, including a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Williams, and it won three accolades at the 78th Academy Awards.[67] The saffron Vera Wang dress, which she wore to the Academy Awards in March 2006, has been cited by Cosmopolitan magazine as one of the Best Oscar dresses of all time.[68]
Williams returned with The Hawk Is Dying (2007), also starring Michael Pitt. It tells the story of George (played by Paul Giamatti), trying to find meaning in his life by training a wild red-tailed hawk. Williams portrayed Pitt's girlfriend, the only person who understands George's growing obsession.[69] The film earned $7,000 domestically playing at one theater.[70] Five months after giving birth, Williams was back, appearing in The Hottest State, a film by Ethan Hawke, adapted from his 1996 book.[71][72] Critics panned it for being too pretentious and self-aware. Variety writer Leslie Felperin believed the film underused Williams as a former lover of one of the main characters.[73] It did a limited theatrical run beginning August 24, ultimately grossing $137,340.[74] Williams played Edie Sedgwick, muse of Andy Warhol, as a part of the biographical ensemble piece I'm Not There, inspired by the musician Bob Dylan.[75]
In October 2006, she signed on to play a blonde known as S, who seduces Ewan McGregor's character in Deception (2008), originally called The Tourist.[76] Williams and McGregor worked together again in Incendiary, about the aftermath of a terrorist attack at a football game, based on Chris Cleaves' 2005 book of the same name.[77] She portrayed the protagonist, an unnamed adulterous British mother who loses her husband and son in the attack. In his The Independent review, Robert Hanks called it "sloppy" and said Williams deserved better.[78]
Impressed by her work in Dick,[54] the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman cast Williams in his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman and Emily Watson. A box office bomb,[79] it was praised in the media, appearing on many top ten critics' lists for 2008.[80]Wendy and Lucy, an acclaimed small-budget, low-key drama directed and co-written by Kelly Reichardt, follows Wendy, a drifter looking to start a new life, searching for her dog Lucy after a series of setbacks.[81][82] Unlike others, including the director, Williams did not find the film depressing. "Personally I like seeing those kinds of movies. I find them comforting because they make me feel less alone." As the lead actress of Wendy and Lucy, she enjoyed the documentary style of the film.[81]Houston Chronicle writer Amy Biancolli said her performance, "a bare-bones accomplishment of no small heft," was the movie's key.[82] The Toronto Film Critics Association Awards named Williams as the Best Actress, and the film as 2008's Best Movie.[83]
Filming for Mammoth (2009) took Williams to locations in Sweden, Thailand and the Philippines.[84] She co-starred with Gael García Bernal as a successful couple dealing with issues related to modern day globalization. It was director Lukas Moodysson's first English-language movie.[84][85]
In 2010, Martin Scorsese cast her as the dead wife who haunts marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Shutter Island,[86] a psychological thriller based on Dennis Lehane's 2003 best-selling novel of the same name. It was released on February 19, 2010.[87] With $41.1 million in ticket sales at over 2,900 locations, Shutter Island gave Williams her widest release and best opening weekend stats.[88] In December 2010 she appeared with Ryan Gosling as a struggling married couple in the romantic drama Blue Valentine.
The filmmaker Derek Cianfrance made Williams and Gosling live together during the day for a month to get into character.[89] She later said that the experience was great and wished she had appreciated it more.[90] Shown at 2010's Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival, the movie was a hit among critics.[91][92] Both actors were lauded with praise and awards attention.[93][94] "Ms. Williams and Mr. Gosling are exemplars of New Method sincerity, able to be fully and achingly present every moment onscreen together," wrote The New York Times columnist A. O. Scott.[95] Her performance as Cindy, who has grown tired of her husband's addictions and lack of direction, was nominated for Best Actress by the Golden Globe Awards and Academy Awards.
Meek's Cutoff was shot in Burns, Oregon and reunited Williams with Reichardt. It is based on a historical incident on the Oregon Trail in 1845, in which the frontier guide Stephen Meek led a wagon train on an ill-fated journey through a desert.[96] After premiering during the 67th Venice International Film Festival, the well-reviewed bleak period piece saw a limited release in cinemas starting April 8, 2011.[97][98]
Williams made her Broadway debut in the revival of Cabaret, in the role of Sally Bowles. The production opened on April 24, 2014 and she ended her run on November 9, 2014.[109]
In 2015, she starred in the film adaptation of Irène Némirovsky's World War II novel Suite Française, in which she played Lucille Angellier, a French villager who falls in love with Bruno von Falk, a German soldier played by Matthias Schoenaerts.[110]
Williams was the face of Boy by Band of Outsiders' Fall 2008 collection.[115] She was also the face of the brand's Spring 2012 campaign.[116]
In October 2012, Williams was featured in the music video "Paradise" by the band Wild Nothing. The song was featured on the band's 2012 album Nocturne.[117]
In July 2013, Williams became the new face of Louis Vuitton handbags.[118] In July 2014, she became the face of Louis Vuitton Jewellery collection.[119]
In May 2017, Williams became the face of Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer Sunglasses collection.[120]
Williams began dating Australian actor Heath Ledger, her Brokeback Mountain co-star, in 2004 after meeting on the set of the film.[10][123][124] In late April 2005 People reported that Williams and Ledger were expecting a child together. On October 28, 2005, Williams gave birth to their daughter Matilda Rose Ledger.[125]
During Williams and Ledger's time together, they lived in Brooklyn, New York.[65] By September 2007, the couple had amicably ended their three-year relationship.[126] Of the break-up, People quoted her telling Elle magazine, "I didn't know where to go. I couldn't imagine any place in the world that was gonna feel good to me."[125] After Ledger's death from a combined drug intoxication (CDI) in January 2008, Willliams and her daughter became of media interest and were often followed by paparazzi.[34][54] Williams rarely gave interviews until the end of 2009.[127]
On February 1, 2008, in her first public statement after Ledger's death, Williams expressed her heartbreak and described Ledger's spirit as surviving in their daughter, who resembles him.[128] Later that month she attended his memorial and funeral services.[129]
In July 2008, Williams began dating director Spike Jonze. They met on the set of Synecdoche, New York, which Williams starred in and Jonze produced. Williams called the timing of their relationship "impossible", and ended it in September 2009.[130]
Williams has been dating Andrew Youmans, a financial consultant, since July 2017.[131]
^"Michelle Williams". Maxim (online). Archived from the original on January 4, 2013. Retrieved September 3, 2011. ((cite journal)): Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ abBennetts, Leslie (February 2011), "Belle Michelle", Marie Claire, no. 08530, p. 126 ((citation)): |access-date= requires |url= (help)
^ abGalloway, Stephen; Guider, Elizabeth (December 8, 2008). "Oscar Roundtable: The Actresses". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved November 3, 2014.
^ abcHeath, Chris (January 17, 2012). "Some Like Her Hot". GQ. Archived from the original on May 13, 2016. Retrieved May 4, 2016. ((cite news)): Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^ ab"Michelle Ma Belle". Wonderland. March 2008. Archived from the original on March 16, 2011. Retrieved July 8, 2011. ((cite news)): Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
^Lynch, Jason (May 19, 2003). "Departing Shots". People. Retrieved January 11, 2018.
^Lacey, Liam (April 9, 2004). "Review: The United States of Leland". The Globe and Mail. Phillip Crawley. ((cite news)): |access-date= requires |url= (help)
^"The Baxter". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved July 9, 2011.
^Proulx, Annie; McMurtry, Larry; Ossana, Diana (2005, 2006). "Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay". London, New York, Toronto and Sydney: Harper Perennial. ISBN978-0-00-723430-1
^"Archived copy". Archived from the original on January 10, 2013. Retrieved January 10, 2013. ((cite web)): Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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