Michelle Williams has been invited into the AA academy
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invitations included recent acting nominees. Ms. Williams was nominated as Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for: Brokeback Mountain (2005). The academy has just under 6,000 voting members.
She shared the Film Independent Robert Altman Award for Synecdoche, New York (2008) also
Michelle Williams was honored at the Fresh Air Fund Salute (June 4), picking up an America Hero award.
Shutter Island (2009)
Directed by Martin Scorsese. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams, Ben Kingsley. first official picture, April 23, plus paps pic from Boston location
Incendiary: DVD May 9, '09
A woman wrestles with grief, betrayal and redemption in this psychological drama
from director Sharon Maguire.
One afternoon, a young woman (Michelle Williams) sends her husband and young son off to see a football game, and while they're gone for the afternoon she enjoys a tryst with her lover (Ewan McGregor), an opportunistic reporter. While the woman is making love to another man, she hears a news report that a suicide bomber made their way into the stadium, and that hundreds of people are dead. The woman is horrified to learn that her husband and child were among the victims, and as she struggles to sort out the pieces of her life, she begins having second thoughts about her illicit relationship while struggling with her feelings about Terrence Butcher (Matthew Macfadyen), a police officer looking into the attack. As the woman tries to come to terms with her grief, she befriends a young boy (Usman Khokhar) whose father happened to be involved in the attacks. Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Chris Cleave, Incendiary received its world premiere at the 2008 ~Sundance Film Festival on January 21. News of Heath Ledger's death came the next day
(Williams was not scheduled to be in Park City, according to the film’s publicist (she was in Sweden on a set); on Wednesday January 23, she arrived in Brooklyn, at the home she once shared with Ledger.)
Independent Spirit Awards, February '09
It has been nine months, in February '09, since Michelle Williams, 28, last set foot on a film set She hopes to throw herself into films like Wendy and Lucy, films which pay little, and in return, demand little in terms of having to promote them.
"I can handle sitting here chatting in a bar in Brooklyn, that's right up my alley," she says. "I just don't want to strap a film to my back – fly all over the world and show up at lots of different places with a different dress and a new hairdo.
"I'll be happy making movies for $300,000 for the rest of my life, if the roles are interesting."
Mammoth opens at Berlin Film Festival, February '09
Variety Daily: Garcia Bernal and Williams look great but can’t overcome their superficial characterizations and bland lines. The foreign supporting cast (whose scenes are shot mostly in Tagalog and Thai) also look good and rate higher on the likability and credibility scales.
Oscar picks
Manohla Dargis: nominates Michelle Williams as best actress for Wendy and Lucy and for best supporting actress for Synecdoche, New York
Pretty smart take
“Wendy never reveals herself by what she says, and that really interested me,” Ms. Williams said. “I kept thinking I’d missed a scene with some exposition, some kind of backstory that explains why she is the way she is. Then I realized I had to fill that all in with just her voice and her body language. That was a great challenge.”
That’s a pretty smart take. This is movie with no signage, no obvious explanations about who you are looking at and why she is acting this way. The character of Wendy, locked in a town in the Pacific Northwest by engine failure, reveals herself in gestures, by turns hopeful and desperate, that lets the viewer know that there will be no pat end, no big uplift. Sometimes narrative is told through the prism of mood, of what’s not there, and by the time this movie ends, we know the real story is just beginning.
Matilda filed a suit
ReliaStar , the insurance company. has insisted on investigating the possibility that Heath Ledger, the late actor, took his life.
They then refused to pay out on the policy, stating they were "entitled to investigate Plaintiff's claim to determine if the 'suicide' provision is applicable'".If the company's probe found Ledger's death to be suicide, the policy would be void, apart from the premiums the star paid into it while still alive.
The trustee for Ledger's three-year-old daughter, Matilda, filed a suit against the company, accusing ReliaStar of acting "maliciously, fraudulently and/or oppressively... depriving plaintiff of the insurance policy benefits".
And now, a trial date has been set for 29 August 2009.
MANOHLA DARGIS "my last (though not least) favorite of the year, Kelly Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy,”
Award Stew
The Dark Knight studio, Warner Bros., would apparently prefer Michelle Williams to accept any award to Heath Ledger on behalf of her and Ledger's three-year-old daughter Matilda.
The Daily News of New York reported that the Hollywood Foreign Press members preferred that Michelle Williams accept the Globe, “on behalf of Matilda,”
"No discussions have been made for Michelle to accept [any award for Heath Ledger] nor are there any plans to take part," the spokesman said.
Larry Williams in Custody
Carla & Michelle
Larry Williams was taken into custody this morning and is expected to be sent back to Los Angeles sometime Wednesday. Mr Williams, 65, the father of Heath Ledger's former partner Michelle Williams, handed his toothbrush and finance books to officers as they stripped him of his belongings at Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney today. Williams, a stock trader, is charged with failing to pay roughly $1.5 million in taxes between 1999 and 2001 on income from book royalties and international speaking tours. He was arrested by Australian police back in 2006 and, while free on bail, has been fighting extradition ever since.
Michelle explains, "It's a strange thing having one's father locked up, but you get used to it."
The former DAWSON'S CREEK star left home when she was 15 years old and became legally emancipated from her parents so she could move to Los Angeles and become an actress.
Ms. Williams is not close to her father and was shocked when he was arrested in Australia, which is where Ledger hails from.
She adds, "It is ironic to have him (Larry) in Australia, of all places. It's like, 'Could you pick somewhere else to get arrested? Sydney is a little tricky for us!'" here
Synecdoche, New York
Ms. Williams’s Claire, the adoring young woman who earlier played Willy Loman’s wife, joins the new cast and soon marries Caden,
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK "one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart" NYT
produced by Anthony Bregman, Mr. Kaufman, Spike Jonze and Sidney Kimmel
Michelle Williams and Spike Jonze, October 15, 2008
More details on Matilda's claim
Attorney John S. LaViolette sued Minnesota-based ReliaStar Life Insurance Co. in July, claiming the company is trying to avoid paying the claim to Ledger's 2-year-old daughter Matilda Rose. William Shernoff is the attorney representing LaViolette and Matilda. RoseReliaStar counters that its inquiries are valid and that the lawsuit is "premature" since no determination on whether to pay the policy has been made. ING Americas owns ReliaStar.
The lawsuit claims ReliaStar sent a letter a week after Ledger's death seeking medical and pharmaceutical records. The lawsuit claims such inquiries should have been made before the actor's death and are now barred under California law.The lawsuit was removed from Los Angeles Superior Court to federal court in August. A scheduling conference for the case is scheduled Dec. 1. The lawsuit could take years to resolve. here
AN insurance payment of $10m (£5.6m) to the three-year-old daughter of Heath Ledger, the actor who died of an overdose of prescription medicines, is being withheld by ReliaStar Life, the Dutch insurance company, which wants to interview Mary-Kate Olsen, 22, the actress who may have been the last person to talk to him. Olsen’s lawyer said she had no idea where Ledger obtained his drugs.
Blue Valentine on Michelle Williams schedule
Many planned David Bergstein/ThinkFilm releases are now in limbo. The drama "Blue Valentine" was never made because the promised funding fell through.
"The last few weeks have been particularly hard on Michelle because Heath's face has been plastered all over TV and on billboards. It's been extraordinarily difficult as she tries to somehow come to terms with his death and what that means for little Matilda.
"Then there is the awful, festering issue of what he was worth, where the money has gone and what there is going to be in the estate for Matilda.""The presumption that Michelle ever intended to attend 'The Dark Knight' premiere is unfounded, but to say she is 'boycotting' due to a rift with Heath's family is absurd," Williams' representative told Usmagazine.com.
"It is time to allow this family to go about their lives without this continued scrutiny and speculation.
Wendy & Lucy, Michelle Williams almost always on screen. As of Thursday night’s screening at Cannes, though distributors were circling the room, this pitch-perfect triumph had yet to attract an American buyer. It will. —MANOHLA DARGIS
Producers
Film Science [us] Old Joy
Glass Eye Pix [us] Zombie Honeymoon
A skittish and shaking Michelle Williams stepped out on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival, her first official public foray since the death of her ex, actor Heath Ledger, in January.
Synecdoche, New York (2008), producers Likely Story [us] Sidney Kimmel Entertainment [us] (Kite Runner)
At one point a bony Michelle Williams shows up in a fabulous haircut and towering heels that would fell a lesser woman. Complications ensue. NY Times
* Rifkin-Eberts (True Believers (2009))
* Media Rights Capital (This Side of the Truth (2009))
Lisa Taddeo - "The risk of a piece like "The Last Days of Heath Ledger" is that the work winds up in a literary no-man's land. "The biggest problem I see is you are sacrificing the biggest strengths from each of the genres," said Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia "You are losing the veracity of journalism, and you are losing the imaginative license of fiction. You run the risk of ending up with something that is neither true nor interesting." Esquire
Michelle was back filming drama Mammoth 11 February 2008 in New York. She is planning to head to Boston in March to film Ashecliffe. She is starring in Ashecliffe alongside Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio
Ledger was engaged to actress Michelle Williams, whom he met on the set of Brokeback Mountain. Their daughter, Matilda Rose, was born in 2005. The child's godparents are Ledger's Brokeback costar Jake Gyllenhaal and Williams' Dawson's Creek castmate Busy Phillips. The family home was in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill section at the corner of Hoyt and Dean.
Reporters and camera congregated outside the house.
blogknowsbrooklyn comments The temperature in January was cold, often below freezing and the wind was brisk. Michelle Williams was filming and had Matilda with her. Williams, 27, made a stop in Landvetter Airport in Gothenburg, Sweden,
before traveling on to New York. She arrived at her Brooklyn home January 23. Reports claim Williams was with her
mother, Carla, and actress Busy Philipps. Someone is at the door in this picture.
Metal fences placed at a goodly distance from the townhouse to keep the media at bay. Photographers were equipped with long lenses. Reporters with furry hoods.
This crowd gathered outside Heath Ledger's bachelor apartment in Manhattan's Soho section on Broome Street at Crosbie at noon on January 25, 2008. another crowd
The apartment, where he died on January 22, 2008, is quite near Broadway and south of Houston - an area of clothing shops and restaurants.
The journalists also gathered at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home on Manhattan's East Side.
Heath Ledger's body was transported here, at Madison and 81st, after the police autopsy.
The crowds still gather at the apartment where a fan shrine continues.
“Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine,”An initial autopsy on January 23 proved inconclusive at determining Ledger's cause of death. Heath's drugs