Michelle Williams emulates Marilyn Monroe on the cover of GQ!
Michelle Williams is underwear sexy on the cover of GQ Magazine!
Here are some excerpts from the interview:
Shes not drawn to the darkness:Maybe when I was in my early twenties and my late teens, I was more prone to sitting in it or lacerating myself with it, she says. Now I want to move out of it. I have a daughter. I want a happy life.
On her education, and how she ended up being home-schooled (a better fit with her acting work):
Her last formal school was Santa Fe Christian in San Diego; later its principal would denounce Williams after she appeared in Brokeback Mountain. (Michelle doesnt represent the values of this institution, he said. She made the kinds of choices of which we wouldnt approve.) It didnt really bother me, she says, when I allude to this. No twinge, I ask, when you suddenly found out that youd been living a sinful, artistic career? It wasnt any surprise to me, she says. I knew. I remember my mother saying to me at one point, Just dont make anything your grandmother couldnt see. And at that point I knew I was living a sinful artistic career, because I had done, and I knew I would do.
Being legally emancipated at 15:When Williams legally emancipated herself from her parents at 15, she didnt do so because of any family schism, but for the independence and the practical advantagesshe says she no longer needed a tutor and could work adult hours. When I suggest that it was pretty ambitious and self-contained to think she could handle it, she agrees. It was just stupid. I didnt know what I was taking on, she says. I dont think things through very oftenI dont project into the future about how a situation will turn out. Even the sim! plest th ings, Im guilty of making really bad decisions a lot of the time. In my work its a capacity thats served me well, but in my life it can be a problem.
On playing a bad girl on Dawsons Creek:I wouldnt say that that would be one of my first qualities as a human beingbeing sexy, Williams reasons. And I think because my character on Dawsons Creek was sexysexualizedsexualI saw all the negative attention and connotations that can come along with that. And that those things can keep people from seeing you clearly.
On Brokeback Mountain:I didnt know what to make of it, she says. Maybe when you see something different for the first time, you dont know how to categorize it. It doesnt really fit with anything else. Like the first time you listen to Bjrk. The first time you eat sashimi. She hasnt seen it since. But she does know what she thinks of it now. I think its a great film. Andits probably obvious but She pauses for a long time, and when she picks up the thought her voice is quieter and higher: well, hes really quite astounding in it. Heath.
How she and Heath Ledger were drawn to each other:Theres an answer that I know, she says, but I dont want to say. She talks around this not-saying for a while, then says, Our initial meeting, the circumstances of how we first met, were cosmic or something. They were together through the shoot, and soon she was pregnant. Yeah, a lot of things happened at once, she says. Its a bit like: We had a lot of things to do, because we didnt have a lot of time, or something.
Dating after Heaths death:She explains that a year or two ago, she was putting herself under a lot of pressure to find someone new to spend her life with, for a particular reason. Because I really wanted, and I really expected or imagined, that Matilda would have siblings that were close to her age. I wanted that for her. But I couldnt make that happen. And now that shes 6 that isnt even a possibility anymore. So something! that wa s making me feel impatient, thats been removed. For whatever reason, thats not our luck, or our path. A further thought. You know, as hard as certain things have been for me, its been harder thinking about how things will be for her. I have a lot of things that she doesnt, and some of what I have I can give to herthe memories that I have, the objects that I have, the physical reminders that I have, the stories. But she wont really have any that are solely And that is where that sentence ends.
Was there a part of her that imagined she and Ledger would have somehow ended up together?That would make me way too sad to answer, she says quickly, and I hurriedly begin another question, about something completely different, hoping that if I say it fast enough these new words will chase the old words away from where they are hanging in the air between us, and maybe she will let me pretend that it was something I never said. No, no, she says, and I can see the tears forming, and I think she means that she doesnt want to answer any more questions about anything. I mutter some kind of apology under my breath. But, even now, Im wrong about everything. Mostly she is just trying to stop my new question. She has something to tell me. No, she says. I said it would make me too sad to answer but its alsoand she nods even as her voice breaks once more with tearsone of my favorite things to imagine. And through the tears, a beaming, almost beatific smile stretches room-wide across her face. Its actually one of my favorite places to visit.