Carla & Michelle

Larry Williams in Custody

 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.

 here

 

 

 

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

Deception       * Seed Productions         (X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009))
                            * 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