Interview with Michelle Williams
Starred in the movie Brokeback Mountain.
Michelle Williams has a
huge career ahead of her
Michelle
Williams with Heath
Ledger in a wedding scene
from Brokeback Mountain
Having
grown up in the spotlight, as one of the stars on the Warner
Brother’s
memorable teen-drama "Dawson’s Creek", Michelle Williams is
use
to the incessant camera flash and the tacky tabloid headlines. It was a
relief, she says, to discover the Australian media were a lot less
bloodthirsty and obtrusive than Hollywood’s finest.
"Everyone’s
been so nice and respectful, and nobody's out for anything
salacious,” the pretty blonde actress, in Australia to
promote her latest film, says.
Unfortunately, the press here haven’t been treating husband Heath
Ledger as kindly, she says.
Well, one local outlet in
particular hasn’t been anyway.
“[This
one newspaper]. They’re turning into like Who or OK
[magazine]. They’ve been really tough on Heath, and he takes
it personally. They’ve been tossing out this stuff about him
being a spitter (reports say he had spat at journalists), and
it’s just so mean, and it really hurts his feelings.
He’s not that way at all. It’s not true. The only
spitter in our house is Matilda."
Yep,
baby Matilda, Williams and Ledger’s beautiful new bub.
Williams is really enjoying being a new mother - but says
it’s exhausting.
Unfortunately, "Heath
doesn’t have breasts," so he
doesn’t get up at night as often as Michelle.
"There’s only one person she wants."
The
actress met husband Ledger on the set of their latest film, Brokeback
Mountain, in which she plays the wife of a man having a
secret affair
with another male. The film served as a bit of a trip back home for
Williams, who had lived in Montana until she was "about eight or nine."
"Well,
I didn’t
really get to go back home per
se - because the film was shot in
Canada - but I did get to take a road trip through Montana and Wyoming.
It was really special. I saw where my grandparents lived, before they
died, and I also walked around the streets. It was a very strange, but
stirring, homecoming."
When Williams
told her mother that the cast were being taught how to speak in an
accent, her mother bit back "What accent?" There
is one, says Williams, it’s just "slight,
it’s not like a Southern drawl, or it’s not like
Fargo
or
anything. There’s long 'A's that you hit
really hard - Heath hears it."
Brokeback
Mountain might seem like a departure for director Ang Lee,
who’s famous for his action-packed Crouching
Tiger, Hidden
Dragon, but Williams believes all his films have similar
themes. "They touch on family and isolation,
relationships…but it’s amazing what he can do. I
mean, a film about two gay ranch hands in the rockies? Very far from
where he grew up."
Williams says Lee
helped the cast perfect their characters significantly before filming
began ("We laid down so much ground work before hand so that
you feel comfortable") and it really helped unleash a
performance. Her character, Alma Del Mar, is a very baffled, very
fraught woman. "She’s choking on all the things she
can say," says Williams.
Her character
wasn’t the only one that events got to. Williams says both
Heath and herself had difficultly coming down from some of the more
emotional scenes in the film. "I remember, after doing that
scene in the kitchen, we were having tea and a glass of wine, and we
just had to talk. [But] Just to talk about what happened - really
helps."
Williams will next be seen in The
Hawk is Dying, with acclaimed actor Paul Giamatti. "That
was
wild, that Paul Giamatti is just a ferociously talented man -
it’s frightening. He’s a force of nature.
He’s so good, but you just can’t resent him for
it," she laughs. "It’s a wild story about
this man whose deepest desire is to tame a wild hawk. I play a grad
student that befriends him."
Whatever
happens after that, it’ll only be something that speaks to
Williams, she explains. "Besides Dawson’s Creek,
everything I’ve done has been for love," the
actress, whose other credits include Prozac Nation and Imaginary
Heroes, says. "There’s a little sign in this
café that we go to that says ‘Work is Love
Invisible’. That’s what I do. I do what I
love."
