In a recent interview, Michelle Williams revealed that she’s married partner Phil Elverum and it was a secret ceremony.
The actress opened up about her relationship with the singer and songwriter in her September 2018 Vanity Fair cover story which was published on Thursday, July 26. According to the article, the couple tied the knot in the Adirondacks in upstate New York earlier thus month in the presence of a small group of friends and their two daughters – Williams is the mother of 12-year-old Matilda with the late Heath Ledger, while Elverum is the father of 3-year-old Agathe with the late illustrator Geneviève Castrée.
The actress was said to be initially hesitant to share details about what she called her “very sacred and very special” romance with Elverum, 40, but later changed her mind.
“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.’”
In a gushing manner, she continued: “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?”
Phil Elverum may not be a household name like his Oscar-nominated wife, he is a critically acclaimed indie musician. The duo met through a mutual friend and they share a similar backstory.
Elverum’s late wife, Geneviéve Castrée, passed away in July 2016 at the age of 35 from pancreatic cancer, leaving behind their 18-month-old daughter while Williams lost husband Heath Ledger at the age of 28 from cardiac arrest brought on by prescription drug intoxication in January 2008.
Williams has this advice: “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.”
