Michelle Williams’ Most Bittersweet Quotes About Heath Ledger and Their Daughter Matilda: ‘Every Time I Really Miss Him … I Just Look at Her’

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Michelle Williams’ Most Bittersweet Quotes About Heath Ledger and Their Daughter Matilda: ‘Every Time I Really Miss Him … I Just Look at Her’

Standing strong. Michelle Williams is committed to keeping Heath Ledger’s legacy alive and ensuring that their daughter, Matilda Rose, knows who her father was. Williams and Ledger started dating in 2005 after meeting on the set of Brokeback Mountain. They welcomed Matilda in October of that year, but they went their separate ways in October 2007. Ledger died in January 2008 at age 28 due to an accidental drug overdose, leaving Williams all alone with their little one. Shortly after the Dark Knight actor’s passing, the Dawson’s Creek alum and Matilda moved out of their Brooklyn home to rural upstate New York due to excessive attention from the paparazzi. Williams’ friend Daphne Javitch, a holistic-nutrition coach, moved in with her after Ledger’s death to help her cope with the loss as the world watched her grieving process unravel. “To have that kind of attention in such an aggressive way, around you and your child, when so much of it is coming from what truly is tragedy for a family … it’s a kind of violence,” Javitch told Vanity Fair in July 2018. Williams added to the publication, “It was unmanageable to be stalked like that, every moment of the day. So I left, in a desire to create a sane home environment.” Williams’ best friend, Busy Philipps, added that the Greatest Showman actress struggled to mourn in the public eye. “She always had a difficult time with the idea of doing press and what to reveal,” she explained to Vanity Fair. “And then when Heath passed away, and people had this insatiable interest in her and her child and their grief, it was overwhelming and incredibly painful.” The Cougar Town alum also weighed in on Williams and Ledger’s relationship in her 2018 memoir, This Will Only Hurt a Little, revealing her belief that they would reunite. “[Heath] and Michelle were in the process of separating at this point,” Philipps wrote, referencing her 2007 surprise wedding to screenwriter Marc Silverstein. “I felt sad for both of them, but weirdly, like something would be figured out and it wasn’t the end of the story for them. They were so young and that baby was the light of both of their lives. They were just working all the time and it was complicated. S--t is always complicated. Especially when you’re 28. And movie stars. With a baby.” Williams slowly picked up the pieces, marrying musician Phil Elverum in July 2018, only to split less than a year later. Us Weekly confirmed in December 2019 that the Golden Globe winner was engaged to Hamilton director Thomas Kail and pregnant with the couple's first child. Us Weekly confirmed the two were married in a secret ceremony in May 2020, just a month before Williams gave birth to their daughter, Hart. The Venom actress announced she was expecting her second child with Kail during a May 2022 interview with Variety. "It's totally joyous," she gushed at the time. Scroll down to revisit Williams’ most heartwarming anecdotes about Ledger and Matilda.

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His Mini-Me

Ledger lives on through his daughter, Matilda. “Every time I really miss him and wonder where he’s gone, I just look at her,” Williams told Vogue in September 2009. “I can talk about grief, because that’s mine, about single parenting, about trying to balance work and kids. But what I don’t have to talk about is what happened between Heath and me in our relationship. Brokeback Mountain was an unrepeatable moment in time, a very charmed time in my life. I was in love. I was in a movie I was proud to be a part of and with a beautiful, brand new baby. Everything was good in that moment.” 

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Feeling Nostalgic

Williams reminisced on her last year with Ledger for Nightline in December 2010. “In a strange way, I miss that year, because all those possibilities that existed then are gone. It didn’t seem unlikely to me that he could walk through a door or could appear behind a bush,” she explained. “It was a year of very magical thinking, and, in some ways, I’m sad to be moving further and further away from it. … I’ve found meanings around the circumstance [of his death], but the actual event itself still doesn’t… I can’t find a meaning for it.”

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Treading Cautiously

“It all becomes rather tricky [talking about Ledger] because I don’t want to say something without resonance, but then I don’t want to go too far,” the Great and Powerful Oz actress told the Daily Beast in January 2011 of why she hesitates to bring up her relationship with the Patriot actor. “I experienced a lot of loss after his death. I lost my city because of all the paparazzi descending upon us. I actually lost my journal during that time, oddly enough. I literally couldn’t hold onto anything. It felt as if things were literally slipping through my fingers. Things were just streaming away from me. I lost my sense of humor. I’m still looking for that.”

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Gone But Never Forgotten

The Blue Valentine star told Marie Claire in January 2011 that she will never be able to fill the void left by Ledger. “Obviously, for me and for [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,” she explained. “Nothing will fill in that hole, because what we want back, we can’t get, which is this person. I’m not going to rush anything and scamper around like a mad person and make myself crazy. I’m going to be respectful of the absence. I’m not trying to fill it up. It is what it is.”

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Always in Her Heart

Williams had trouble coming to terms with the physical loss of Ledger after his death. “For a really long time, I couldn’t stop touching people’s faces. I was like, ‘Look at you. You move. You’re here.’ It all just seemed so fleeting and I wanted to hold onto it,” she told Vogue in September 2011. “Three years ago, it felt like we didn’t have anything and now, my life, our life, has a kind of repaired itself. [Ledger’s death has] changed how I see the world and how I interact on a daily basis. It’s changed the parent I am. It’s changed the friend I am. It’s changed the kind of work that I really want to do. It’s become the lens through which I see life — that it’s all impermanent.”

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Pride and Joy

Williams dedicated her January 2012 Golden Globe win for Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) to Matilda, who has been so strong in light of the hardships she has faced. “I consider myself a mother first and an actress second and so the person I most want to thank is my daughter, my little girl, whose bravery and exuberance is the example that I take with me in my work and in my life.”

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Lost Dreams

The My Week With Marilyn actress revealed to GQ in January 2012 that she would have liked to have more children with the Australian actor. “I really wanted, and I really expected or imagined, that Matilda would have siblings that were close to her age,” she said at the time. “And now that she’s 6, that isn’t even a possibility anymore. So something that was making me feel impatient, that’s even removed, For whatever reason, that’s not our luck, not our path. You know, as hard as certain things have been for me, it’s harder thinking about how things will be for her. I have a lot of things that she doesn’t and some of what I have, I can give to her: The memories that I have, the objects that I have, the physical reminders that I have, the stories.”

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No. 1 Priority

“Raising the kid is work, yeah. And it’s amazing and it’s the ultimate creative act,” the All the Money In the World actress gushed to Paper magazine in April 2013, noting that her daughter is her “side project and [her] center project.” 

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Irreplaceable

Williams told Porter magazine in December 2016 that she’s a “believer in not fighting circumstances,” with one exception: “I would be able to totally go down that line of thinking were it not for Matilda not having her dad. You know, that’s just something that doesn’t … I mean, it just won’t ever be right.”

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Watching Over Them

Williams had hesitations about selling the home she shared with Matilda and the 10 Things I Hate About You star in 2014. “At that time, I was inconsolable, because I felt, ‘How will he be able to find us? This is where we lived and he won’t know where we are.’ And now, I can’t believe I thought that,” she admitted to WSJ Magazine in February 2017. “Maybe that’s what’s making me cry is I feel sad for the person who thought he won’t be able to locate [us].”

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Daddy’s Little Girl

“I never gave up on love,” Williams told Vanity Fair in July 2018, adding, “I always say to Matilda, ‘Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes.’” 

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Bittersweet Birthday

The Manchester by the Sea actress shared update about Matilda on April 4, 2019, what would have been Ledger’s 40th birthday. “So far, so good,” she gushed, noting that her teenage daughter hasn’t given her any trouble. “Every morning we wake up and I look to see if the transformation has happened and if it’s turned into the next level that I keep hearing about, but so far, we’re not there yet.”

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A Surprise Hero

In a May 2022 interview with Variety, the Blue Valentine star revealed that support in raising daughter Matilda came from an unlikely place — Succession actor Jeremy Strong. 

“Jeremy was serious enough to hold the weight of a child’s broken heart and sensitive enough to understand how to approach her through play and games and silliness,” the Dawson’s Creek alum gushed about the actor.

Four years after meeting, Strong moved into Williams’ home to help her adjust to becoming a single parent and act as a stand-in male figure for her daughter's life following Ledger's death.

“[Matilda] didn’t grow up with her father, but she grew up with her Jeremy and we were changed by his ability to play as though his life depended upon it,” she told Variety. “We’ve watched him work harder than anyone and wait a long time for the people to recognize it. So when he became so celebrated, we all celebrated.”