Actress Michelle Williams has quietly married, telling Vanity Fair she never gave up on love after the death of her partner Heath Ledger 10 years ago.

Williams, 37, the fiercely private Oscar-nominated star of Brokeback Mountain, told the magazine in an interview that she married American indie musician Phil Elverum at a private ceremony earlier this month in New York.

She described her relationship with Elverum, whose first wife died of pancreatic cancer, as “very sacred, very special”.
Elverum, who plays in the indie bands The Microphones and Mount Eerie, lost wife Geneviève Castrée in 2015, when daughter Agathe was only 18-months-old.

Williams had a daughter, Matilda, with Ledger but the couple ended their three-year romance a few months before his 2008 death at the age of 28 of an accidental prescription drugs overdose. “I never gave up on love,” Williams said. “I always say to Matilda, ‘Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes’. Obviously I’ve never once in my life talked about a relationship, but Phil isn’t anyone else.”

Williams spoke of how she and Matilda were hounded by media in the months after Ledger’s death. “I’ll never forget going to the post office and seeing a sign hung on the wall for anyone with information about myself and my daughter, to please call this number. Um, so I took that down,” she said.

“When you’re a single parent, and that element of provider and protection is missing, it’s scary,” Williams added.
The actress also opened up about her public fight for equal pay. “You feel totally devalued,” she said. “A private humiliation became a public turning point.”

Late last year, it was reported that Williams only made $80 per diem for reshoots of All the Money in the World, while her male co-star Mark Wahlberg, one of the highest paid actors in the world, earned $1.5 million. 

Williams explained why she agreed to do the reshoots at such a minimal cost. (Reshoots were needed to re-create Kevin Spacey’s scenes after he was accused of sexual misconduct and replaced with Christopher Plummer.) 

“It wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask for money for the reshoots. I just wanted to do the right thing on his behalf,” Williams said, referring to Anthony Rapp, the actor who accused Spacey of unwanted sexual advances on him as a teen.