Michelle Williams is married! The actress wed partner Phil Elverum in a secret ceremony.
Williams, 37, opened up about her relationship with the singer-songwriter in her September 2018 Vanity Fair cover story, published on Thursday, July 26. According to the magazine, the couple tied the knot in the Adirondacks, with only a small group of friends and their two daughters present.
The Dawson’s Creek alum was initially hesitant to share details about what she called her “very sacred and very special” romance with Elverum, 40, but later changed her mind. The musician and the Oscar nominee, who met through a mutual friend, share a similar backstory: His late wife, Geneviéve Castrée, passed away in July 2016 from pancreatic cancer, leaving behind their 18-month-old daughter. Williams can relate, having lost Heath Ledger, with whom she shared daughter Matilda, now 12, in January 2008.
“I never gave up on love,” Williams told Vanity Fair. “I always say to Matilda, ‘Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes.’”
She gushed: “Obviously I’ve never once in my life talked about a relationship, but Phil isn’t anyone else. And that’s worth something. Ultimately the way he loves me is the way I want to live my life on the whole. I work to be free inside of the moment. I parent to let Matilda feel free to be herself, and I am finally loved by someone who makes me feel free.”
“I don’t really want to talk about any of it,” she noted. “But there’s that tease, that lure, that’s like, What if this helps somebody? What if somebody who has always journeyed in this way, who has struggled as much as I struggled, and looked as much as I looked, finds something that helps them?”
Williams’ advice for those people? “Don’t settle. Don’t settle for something that feels like a prison, or is hard, or hurts you,” she said. “If it doesn’t feel like love, it’s not love.”
