Michelle Williams secretly marries indie musician Phil Elverum
Famously private actress Michelle Williams revealed in a new interview that she secretly wedded indie singer-songwriter Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie and formerly of the Microphones. The two married in a small ceremony in the Adirondacks, she told Vanity Fair.
Williams spoke to the magazine ahead of the secret wedding, with the magazine teasing, "By the time you read this, she and her partner, singer-songwriter Phil Elverum, whom she met through a mutual friend, will have been married in a secret ceremony in the Adirondacks, witnessed by only a handful of friends and their two daughters."
She and Elverum share something in common: both are single parents with former partners who passed away. Williams' ex, "Brokeback Mountain" co-star Heath Ledger, died in January 2008 at age 28. The cause of his death was linked to various prescription medications. Williams and Ledger had a daughter, Matilda, in 2005 and split in 2007. Elverum's late wife, illustrator and musician Geneviève Castrée, was diagnosed with inoperable stage-4 pancreatic cancer in 2015, just four months after they welcomed a daughter. She died 13 months later in July 2016, when their daughter was just 18 months old.
Williams told Vanity Fair that her relationship with Elverum is "very sacred and very special." In July, Elverum and his 3-year-old daughter moved from Anacortes, Washington, to Brooklyn to live with Williams and her daughter, who is now 12.
"I never gave up on love," Williams said in the revealing interview. "I always say to Matilda, 'Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes.'"
She also admitted that she has been very private about her romances in the past, but said, "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."
The actress said that though she is very private, she decided to come forward with her love story in hopes of inspiring other women.
"I don't really want to talk about any of it," she explained. "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?"
The actress, who shuns social media, said, "Don't settle. Don't settle for something that feels like a prison, or is hard, or hurts you. If it doesn't feel like love, it's not love."
