'Don't settle': Michelle Williams shares dating advice inspired by Heath Ledger with their daughter Matilda, 17
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Michelle Williams reveals what advice she gave her daughter Matilda Ledger when it comes to dating and romance. The 42-year-old actress dated Heath Ledger, Matilda's father, from 2004 to 2007. They were engaged until they broke up in 2007, just four months before his horrific death
The actor, who played the Joker in 'The Dark Knight,' died unexpectedly at the age of 28 from a lethal drug cocktail, leaving behind his daughter Matilda, who was two at the time. Michelle said that Heath served as inspiration for some advice she gave to 17-year-old Matilda in a 2018 interview with Vanity Fair. She said she told her daughter, "Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes. Don't settle. If it doesn't feel like love, it's not love."
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Michelle has already spoken openly about Heath's death, telling Marie Claire that there is a 'hole' left by his death that can never be filled. She said, "Very obviously for me and for her [Matilda], there's a hole in our life. Of course, the natural inclination is to want to fill it and make it disappear, but what I've come to recently is that it's impossible. Nothing will fit in that hole because what we want back, we can't get, which is this one person. I'm not going to rush anything and scamper around like a mad person and make myself crazy. I'm trying to be respectful of the absence. I'm not trying to fill it up. It is what it is."
After Heath's death, Michelle took a break from the spotlight and relocated to upstate New York with Matilda. For six years, Michelle and her daughter lived in a farmhouse in the countryside, distant from the bustle of the inner city. She had earlier claimed that the change was motivated by her wish to give her daughter "a sane home environment." She told the New York Post in June 2016: "We moved - we left Brooklyn and lived in the country for six years because it was an intolerable state of existence."
Michelle is now married to Thomas Kail and they have 2 children
In a 2012 interview with GQ, Michelle—who is now married to theater director Thomas Kail—mentioned wishing to give Matilda siblings. She said, "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 couldn't make that happen. And now that she's 6 that isn't even a possibility anymore. So something that was making me feel impatient, that's been removed. For whatever reason, that's not our luck, or our path."
Nevertheless, eight years later, the actress met Thomas, and the two were married in 2020. Later that year, they gave birth to a boy, and then in 2022, they had a second child together. When discussing parenting, Matilda and her other two children earlier this month, Michelle also talked about finding "balance" between filming movies and handling parenthood. She told Entertainment Weekly that children "have to arrive, and they have to be sustained, all of it."
"So I'm continuously searching, because balance isn't a stable place. Balance means that you're always adjusting,' she said. "So you have to figure it out because we have to stay in the workforce, even though it often feels like it's untenable. My heart obviously belongs to my children; they tug at it the most. But I really want to be able to have both."