Background

Ethnicity: Michelle's father is of one half Norwegian, one quarter German, and approximately one quarter English, ancestry, along with distant Scottish roots. Michelle's mother is of three eighths Norwegian descent, with Michelle's mother's other ancestry including Swedish, Swiss-German, Danish, English, Welsh, and Scottish.

Michelle Ingrid Williams was born on September 9, 1980, in Kalispell, Montana, the United States, to Carla Ingrid Willams (née Swenson), a homemaker, and Larry Richard Williams, an author, and stock and commodities trader. He was also a two-time Republican candidate for the United States senate. Williams is of part Norwegian descent.

In Kalispell, Williams lived with her three paternal half-siblings and her younger sister, Paige. Although she has described her family as "not terribly closely-knit", she shared a close bond with her father, who taught her to fish and shoot, and encouraged her to become a keen reader. Williams has recounted fond memories of growing up in the vast landscape of Montana.

As a child, she 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.” When Williams was nine, her family moved to San Diego, California, and she became interested in acting at an early age.

Education

Williams attended many schools over the years, including a Christian school, but eventually decided that earning her GED at home would be the most practical move for her acting career. With a GED, she would be able to be legally emancipated from her parents, which would make her eligible to work longer hours on set than a minor could.

At age 15, with her parents’ approval, she filed for emancipation from them. After completing the ninth grade at the Upper School of Santa Fe Christian Schools, in Solana Beach, California, she left school because of severe bullying. Subsequently, Williams was home-tutored by her father. She emphasizes that the move had nothing to do with any trouble with her family: it was simply to give Williams a better shot at a career, and it soon paid off. To comply with the emancipation guidelines, she completed her high school education in nine months through correspondence. She later regretted not getting a proper education.

Career

Williams became interested in acting at an early age when she saw a local production of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Many of her Southern California classmates were pursuing small acting jobs, such as commercials, and Williams decided that she, too, wanted to act. She performed in an amateur production of the musical Annie, and her parents would drive her from San Diego to Los Angeles to audition for parts.

Her 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.he following year, she made her film debut in the family movie Lassie, about the bond between a young boy (played by Tom Guiry) and 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". 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.

Michelle Williams landed her first major role at 16, as troubled teenager Jen Lindley on the hit teen show Dawson's Creek, where she remained from 1998 until 2003. The show made stars out of its teen leads, but the experience was a mixed one for Williams, who feared being typecast as a "pop tart" and was already considering what she wanted to do next.

While on hiatus from filming Dawson's Creek, Williams lived in New York City and worked toward her bigger goals. She took parts in a variety of movies, ranging from comedies to horrors, like Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. It was a financial success, making $55 million against its $17 million budget. With Kirsten Dunst, Williams co-starred in the comedy Dick (1999). The movie is a parody, recounting the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon.

She began to do more challenging work, starting with a small part in But I’m a Cheerleader, directed by Jamie Babbit. She found her calling, though, in independent films such as Me Without You, Prozac Nation and The Station Agent.

Michelle Williams' big break in the film world came in 2005 when she appeared in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain as the wife of a closeted gay rancher. The film was a critical and financial success, and Williams was nominated for her first Academy Award for supporting actress for the role.

As her career progressed, Williams continued to take supporting parts in such iconoclastic projects as Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There (2007), a fragmented portrait of Bob Dylan, and Charlie Kaufman’s inventive existential drama Synecdoche, New York (2008). She won accolades for her nearly solo turn in Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008), in which she evinced the solitary desperation of an impoverished drifter.

Filming for Mammoth (2009) took Williams to locations in Sweden, Thailand and the Philippines. She and Gael García Bernal played the co-leads: a successful couple dealing with issues related to modern-day globalization. It was director Lukas Moodysson‘s first English-language movie and found distribution through IFC Films.

Martin Scorsese cast the actress in the supporting, but vital role, of the dead wife haunting the dreams of marshal Teddy Daniels (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) in Shutter Island, a psychological thriller based on Dennis Lehane‘s 2003 best-selling novel by the same name. Originally due out in October 2009, its release date was bumped to February 19, 2010. With $41.1 million in ticket sales at over 2,900 locations, Shutter Island gave Williams her widest release and best opening weekend stats. In December, she starred opposite 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. She later said that the experience was great and wished she had appreciated it more. Shown at 2010’s Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival, the movie was a hit among critics. Both actors were lauded with praise and awards attention.

In 2010, Williams starred in the relationship drama Blue Valentine opposite Ryan Gosling. She was again nominated for an Academy Award, this time for best actress. In 2011, Williams appeared in another of Kelly Reichardt's films, Meek's Cutoff, playing one of a group of pioneers lost in the Oregon Territory in 1845.

Williams often defines her primary role as a mother but continues to act in a variety of films, shifting easily from roles in low-budget independent films to mainstream productions. One of her most well-known triumphs was portraying Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn. Her depiction of the late Hollywood sex symbol earned her many glowing reviews and several professional accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and her third Oscar nomination.

Williams went on to star as the good witch Glinda, opposite James Franco, in the 2013 fantasy blockbuster Oz the Great and Powerful. She followed that project with the art-house war film Suite Francaise (2014).

In 2016, Williams played the ex-wife of a janitor, played Casey Affleck, who together experience a tragic loss in Manchester by the Sea. She received Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for her performance.

In 2017, Williams earned more critical praise for her role in the J. Paul Getty biopic All the Money in the World, snagging another Golden Globe nomination, and also starred as the wife of Hugh Jackman's P.T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman. The following year, it was on to the big-budget superhero industry with a prominent role in Venom.

Williams returned to the Sundance Film Festival in 2019 with After the Wedding, a remake of Susanne Bier's Danish film of the same name, in which Williams and Julianne Moore played roles portrayed by men in the original. The Guardian's Benjamin Lee considered it to be a reminder of Williams' "ability to bring nuance and empathy to smaller, more intimate fare" after playing "ill-fitting roles" in the previous year. Fosse/Verdon, an FX miniseries about the troubled personal and professional relationship between Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, marked Williams' first lead role in television since Dawson's Creek. Williams also served as an executive producer; she was pleased not to have to negotiate to receive equal pay with her co-star Sam Rockwell. She said that her experience of performing Cabaret on Broadway prepared her for the role. John Doyle of The Globe and Mail wrote that "Williams plays Verdon with a wonderfully controlled sense of the woman's total commitment to her art and craft while always standing on the edge of an emotional abyss". She received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series.

Williams will next reprise the role of Anne Weying in the sequel Venom 2, after which she will portray the singer Janis Joplin in a biopic directed by Sean Durkin, and the astronaut Christa McAuliffe in The Challenger, a retelling of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. She has also committed to star in Kimberly Peirce's This is Jane, a historical drama about the Jane Collective service.

Achievements

• Williams is known for her delicate beauty and for the emotional depth she brought to vulnerable characters. Williams is the most Oscar-nominated actor born in the '80s, with 4 nominations as of 2019.
  
  Williams has been nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Manchester by the Sea (2016); and Best Actress for Blue Valentine (2010) and My Week with Marilyn (2011). She won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Comedy or Musical for My Week with Marilyn (2011) and has been nominated five more times: Best Actress in a Drama for Blue Valentine (2010) and All the Money in the World (2017); and Best Supporting Actress, for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Manchester by the Sea (2016). Williams has also received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Blackbird.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Halloween H20

    (This smart and suspenseful thriller scares up a bone-chil...)

    1998
  • The Station Agent

    (Winner of 2003 Sundance Film Festival awards, The Station...)

    2003
  • Lassie

    (Watch the extraordinary collie protect Matt from a snarli...)

    1994
  • Prozac Nation

    (Award winners Christina Ricci and Jessica Lange star in t...)

    2001
  • I'm Not There

    (An unconventional journey into the life and times of Bob ...)

    2007
  • I Feel Pretty

    (In I Feel Pretty an ordinary woman who struggles with fee...)

    2018
  • My Week With Marilyn

    (An assistant on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl do...)

    2011
  • Certain Women

    (Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, and Laura Dern star i...)

    2016
  • Dick

    (High school students Betsy Jobs (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlen...)

    1999
  • Wendy and Lucy

    (Wendy Carroll is driving to Ketchikan, Alaska, in hopes o...)

    2008
  • Mammoth

    (Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal star as a beauti...)

    2009
  • Perfume

    (A week in the lives of a group of models, photographers, ...)

    2001
  • Meek's Cutoff

    (In 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, a wagon t...)

    2010
  • Blue Valentine

    (Oscar-nominees Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star in...)

    2010
  • All The Money In The World

    (After the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, in a race ag...)

    2017
  • The Hawk is Dying

    (George Gattling's unsatisfying life is transformed by a f...)

    2006
  • Me Without You

    (Two best friends (Anna Friel and Michelle Williams) grow ...)

    2001
  • Brokeback Mountain

    (A ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy, meet in the summer of 19...)

    2005
  • Take This Waltz

    (When a happily married young woman meets the handsome art...)

    2011
  • Venom

    (Tom Hardy stars as the lethal protector and anti-hero Ven...)

    2018
  • But I'm a Cheerleader

    (A naive teenager is sent to rehab camp when her straitlac...)

    1999
  • Deception

    (An accountant is introduced to a mysterious, sex-dating c...)

    2008
  • The Greatest Showman

    (Hugh Jackman stars in this bold and original musical - in...)

    2017
  • Manchester By The Sea

    (Academy Award Winner for Best Actor (Casey Affleck) and B...)

    2016
  • Synecdoche, New York

    (From the writer of Adaptation, Being John Malkovich and E...)

    2008
  • The United States of Leland

    (Sixteen-year-old Leland Fitzgerald kills a boy and is sub...)

    2003
  • Wonderstruck

    (Ben and Rose are children from two different eras who wis...)

    2017
  • Oz The Great and Powerful

    (The never-before-told fantastical adventure with an all-s...)

    2013
  • The Baxte

    (A comedy directed by and starring Michael Showalter. Elli...)

    2005
  • Land of Plenty

    (Renowned German director Wim Wenders uses L.A. as a backd...)

    2004
  • Species

    (She's beautiful, seductive, intelligent...and her charms ...)

    1995
  • Shutter Island

    (When U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) arrives at the...)

    2010

• music

  • My Week With Marilyn 2011
  • The Greatest Showman 2017

• TV series

  • Fosse/Verdon

    (Fosse/Verdon is an FX limited series that tells the story...)

    2019
  • Dawson's Creek

    (Dawson's Creek was a show that defined a generation. For ...)

    1998

Religion

Williams took acting lessons at the Christian Youth Theater in San Diego and went to a private Christian school there as well. The latter organization made the news when the headmaster publicly stated his disapproval of her role in the movie, Brokeback Mountain about a homosexual relationship between two men. He said: "Michelle doesn’t represent the values of this institution... I hope we offered her something in life. But she made the kinds of choices of which we wouldn’t approve. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ basically promotes a lifestyle we don’t promote. It’s not the word of God."

It’s not certain if she still holds these views.

Views

Williams prefers to work in small-scale independent films over big-budget productions, finding them to be "a very natural expression of my interest". hen asked about her choice of roles, Williams has said that she is drawn towards "people’s failings, blind spots, inconsistencies". She agrees to a project on instinct, calling it an "un-thought out process". Describing her acting process in 2008, she said: "Acting sometimes reminds me of therapy in that the more you talk about a traumatic or profound event, the more it loses its emotional tension. [The trick is] to live in so much mystery, to rely on a feeling, an instinct, on faith, really, that everything I need is already inside me, and best I just don’t block the exit."

Quotations: "I don't think things through very often - I don't project into the future about how a situation will turn out. Even the simplest things, I'm guilty of making really bad decisions a lot of the time. In my work, it's a capacity that's served me well, but in my life, it can be a problem."

"I've learned that the happiest houses are not always the cleanest houses. As a single working parent, you're always asking yourself, 'What's the most important thing right now?' I'd rather concentrate on my daughter."

"When I work I'm not nervous. Work is this fabulous free zone. There's no judgment. My problems arrive when I'm not working."

"I find myself saying this all the time during every movie I make, "Why is this is so hard?" And I realize yes it is. Every movie I make I find kind of excruciating. I get a lot back from it, but I feel like I'm kind of always working at the edge of my ability. I guess that's what I'm looking for when I go to work. I am trying to become the edge."

Personality

Despite the fact that Williams’ star was born due to her role on Dawson’s Creek, and despite her praising of the experience as “the best acting class,” she has lamented that her heart didn’t really belong to that series. However, the financial stability of the show’s production meant that she spent her off-time making indie films that she felt more passionate about.

Williams reportedly took a role in Oz The Great and Powerful so that her daughter, Matilda, could watch something featuring her mother.

In 1997, Williams followed her father’s path by entering the Robbins World Cup Championship of Futures Trading. Williams took an amount of $10,000 and turned it into $100,000, giving her a return of more than 900%. She became the third-highest winner of the competition since its inception in 1984.

Physical Characteristics: Williams is well known for her short, blond hairstyle. In fact, this look inspired none other than pop star Katy Perry to adopt a similar look. Perry even called out Williams as her inspiration on social media in 2017.

Interests

• reading, book collecting

• Writers

  Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain, The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, poems by Galway Kinnell

Connections

Williams and Heath Ledger began dating in 2004 while filming Brokeback Mountain, and she gave birth to their daughter the next year. Williams separated from Ledger in 2007.

In 2018, Williams married the musician Phil Elverum in a secret ceremony in the Adirondack Mountains; the couple separated the following year.

Father:

Larry R. Williams

Mother:

Carla Williams

ex-boyfriend:

Heath Ledger

In 2005 Williams became engaged to Brokeback co-star Heath Ledger, and gave birth to their daughter, Mathilda Rose, on October 28.

After Ledger’s death from a combined drug intoxication (CDI) in January 2008, the usually under-the-radar actress and her daughter became an interest of the media and were often followed by paparazzi. As a result, Williams rarely gave interviews until the end of 2009. 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. That month she attended his memorial and funeral services.

ex-spouse:

Phil Elverum

Daughter:

Matilda Rose Ledger

colleague:

Kyle MacLachlan

colleague:

Elizabeth Banks

colleague:

Anne Hathaway

colleague:

Emily Ratajkowski

colleague:

Katie Holmes

colleague:

Ryan Gosling

Williams starred with Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine, a movie that follows the beginning and end of a couple’s relationship. While they were involved in filming, Williams and Gosling lived in the same house together for four weeks to make sure they got the chemistry right. In addition, they had to live on a budget that matched the characters in the film, which led to some fruitful real-life spats for the production.

colleague:

Leonardo DiCaprio