A day after the mysterious death of year-old Heath Ledger on Jan. There, Williams, 27, was comforted by her mother, Carla, and other supporters, who tried to shield her from photographers and shuttled in deliveries of food. On Jan. Her family is getting her through this. But many who spent time with him in the last months of his life paint a portrait of man whose demons drove him away from the family he loved and into a lonely, nomadic life of insomnia, casual affairs and, according to several sources, serious drug use.
She was very clear that Heath loved his daughter and was a good father. Strong-willed even as a young teen actress—she filed for emancipation from her parents when she was 15 so she could work longer hours—Williams bonded with Ledger during an early scene in which they crashed while tobogganing down a hill. Williams tore a ligament in her knee, an injury Ledger blamed on himself. Soon after filming finished, Williams was pregnant; Matilda was born just before Brokeback opened.
As for Heath, he called Michelle the "perfect mom" and said, "I'm so proud. I just fall deeper and deeper in love with both my girls. There were frequent sightings of the family of three in their Brooklyn neighborhood, and anyone with access to the internet was able to see that Michelle wasn't kidding when she told Oprah that Matilda looked like her dad.
But in September , the news broke that Heath and Michelle had split up. After his death, Michelle said in a statement: "Please respect our need to grieve privately.
My heart is broken. I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl who is the spitting image of her father. All that I can cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day. She will be brought up in the best memories of him.
Michelle gathered with Heath's family for a memorial in his native Australia and otherwise grieved as someone who was still very much in love with the actor when he died. It wasn't difficult to imagine that she would never have broken up with him in the first place if she didn't feel she had no other choice—and that hopes of a reconciliation were still on the table. In , she would talk about immersing herself in loss after reading The Year of Magical Thinking , Joan Didion 's memoir of grief written after the sudden death of her husband John Gregory Dunne , and how feeling better was also a strange beast to confront.
In some ways I'm sad to be moving further and further away from it. But first and foremost, Williams had a child to raise—as a working mom, a single mom and, no small obstacle, as a famous mom. Though his films, of which Ledger made enough to suit any movie-watching mood, gave him cinematic immortality, it's Matilda who remains the human embodiment of Ledger's legacy.
So Williams quickly had to get used to public interest in her and her daughter increasing exponentially after they were on their own. And somehow, she has since managed to give Matilda a quiet, private life while only getting more successful, breaking free of any lingering WB-drama attachment and cementing her own reputation as one of the finest actresses of her generation as a star of film, TV and the stage, as well as becoming a longtime face of Louis Vuitton.
But I also need and want certain things out of my career that demand I assume a more public voice. But she also trusts her instincts, which is probably why she managed to get married, divorced, engaged and pregnant with her second child without the public knowing about any of those steps along the way until she decided to share. Taking a break from the spotlight and getting Matilda out of the city certainly helped her pick up the pieces in those early days—while staying off social media entirely has helped keep her daughter off the radar ever since.
She had to navigate the usual New York-L. And choosing the East Coast over the West Coast is always a smart move if you want to be relatively left alone. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes.
Follow Us. Terms Privacy Policy. According to Terry Gilliam, who directed the actor in The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus , their relationship began to mirror that of their characters in Brokeback Mountain , with Ledger going off to be with his friends while Williams became isolated and resentful of his absences.
There was reportedly an increasing pressure for the actor to woo Oscar votes and, while he wasn? That was the moment when it changed, when he realized, uh-oh, we perceive the world differently,? Gilliam told Vanity Fair. The breakup reportedly became ugly because Michelle believed that Heath was doing drugs. More and more lawyers got involved and he quickly became frustrated with the process and was afraid that he might lose custody of his daughter, Matilda.
The only good to come out of this was that Heath stopped smoking weed and drinking alcohol; however, he was still using a variety of prescription medications, which ultimately caused his death in January In , the My Week with Marilyn actress told GQ that when she met Heath, she knew that they would have a special connection.
Our initial meeting, the circumstances of how we first met, were cosmic or something,? Yeah, a lot of things happened at once.
In that same interview, she was asked if there was a part of her that imagined that she would end up with Heath.
She answered that it was one of her? Cate has a B.
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