Michelle Williams on Heath Ledger: "It's So Sad"

The Brokeback Mountain star talks about her grief and dealing with life in the public eye with daughter Matilda

Michelle Williams seems to be legitimately trying to live a normal life with her daughter Matilda despite some tragic circumstances. So we couldn’t agree more when in a recent Newsweek profile, the writer asks, “Don't you think it's time we gave Michelle Williams a little privacy?” Yes, of course we think it’s time!

However, rather conveniently, this question doesn’t come up until the end of the article, once all talk of Heath Ledger and Matilda has been exhausted. And so Michelle struggles to find the words to describe her grief over the past year since Heath’s accidental overdose:

“It’s so sad. I guess it’s always changing. What else can I say? I just wake up each day in a slightly different place—grief is like a moving river, so that’s what I mean by ‘it’s always changing,' " she pauses...

"It’s a strange thing to say because I’m at heart an optimistic person, but I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It’s just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone. In some way it gets worse. That’s what I would say.”

At the center of all this is the ex-couple's daughter, Matilda, and the unwanted paparazzi attention. All Michelle really wants is for her three-year-old daughter "to have a routine": "I want the plainest, simplest, most ordinary, habituated routine possible.”

That could mean the end of her acting career. "If it gets to the point where I can't situate my life in a way that [the paparazzi] stay away more, then I'll drop a match on the thing.”

But she admits, “I'll be sad. I like to act. It's saved my life over and over again. It's given me a sense of self-esteem, self-worth. I have this thing that I'm in love with—acting—and now it has this baggage."

It's not all a bummer party, though. Michelle, who stars in the upcoming film Wendy and Lucy, was "jovial and chatty" while driving around the New York countryside where she has a farmhouse and does ordinary things like get her oil changed and compost. Hopefully, the paparazzi won't follow her up there, and she'll be able to enjoy her year off with Matilda.