Michelle Williams Biography

Michelle Williams has been Oscar nominated many times: for Brokeback Mountain (2005), Blue Valentine (2010), My Week With Marilyn (2011), Manchester by the Sea (2016) and The Fablemans (2022).

Williams also won an Emmy for her performance as dancer Gwen Verdon in the television mini-series Fosse/Verdon (2019).

Michelle Williams was still a teenager when she began getting small TV roles, and she was 15 when she appeared in the 1995 feature film Species. Williams legally separated from her parents in Montana before she was 18 so that she could pursue a career in acting, and it paid off.

In 1998 she began the first of six seasons as Jen Lindley on the hit TV show Dawson’s Creek. The show made Williams a TV star, alongside fellow Creeksters James Van Der Beek and Katie Holmes. While working on that series, Michelle Williams began a film career that included the horror film Halloween H20 (1998) and the political comedy Dick (1999, opposite Kirsten Dunst).

Michelle Williams and actor Heath Ledger became a couple during the filming of Brokeback Mountain, and both were nominated for Oscars for their work on the film. Their daughter Matilda Rose was born in October of 2005. They separated in 2007, and Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in 2008.

Michelle Williams has since had a screen career mixing big budget films with small-scale independent features, and lots of them. Her indie-leaning films include Blue Valentine (which co-starred Ryan Gosling) and the Kelly Reichardt films Wendy and Lucy (2008) and Meek’s Cutoff (2010) and Certain Women (2016).

She’s also appeared in big box office entertainments such as  Shutter Island (2010, directed by Martin Scorsese), My Week With Marilyn (2011, as Marilyn Monroe), All the Money in The World (2017, directed by Ridley Scott), The Greatest Showman (2017, starring Hugh Jackman), I Feel Pretty (2018, starring Amy Schumer) and (as the ex-girlfriend) the Tom Hardy Venom movies (2018 and 2021).