Surprise, Michelle Williams is married.
In a just-released Vanity Fair profile, the actress, 37, revealed that she secretly wed indie rocker Phil Elverum earlier this month in a small ceremony in the Adirondacks in front of a handful of friends and family members.
“Obviously I’ve never once in my life talked about a relationship,” she told the magazine, “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.”
The shock reveal comes a little over half a year after the actress was reported to be engaged to financier Andrew Youmans.
This is Williams’ first marriage. She has a 12-year-old daughter, Matilda, from her relationship with the late actor Heath Ledger, whom she was with from 2003 to 2007.
“I always say to Matilda, ‘Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes,’” she said of Ledger.
Like the actress, the 40-year-old Elverum, who primarily records under the name Mount Eerie, knows what it’s like to have to raise a child after losing a partner. In 2016, his first wife, artist and musician Geneviève Castrée, died of pancreatic cancer, a year after giving birth to the couple’s daughter.
The actress also discussed the pay disparity between her and Mark Wahlberg while filming reshoots of “All the Money in the World.”
“You feel totally devalued,” Williams told the magazine of their difference in pay. “A private humiliation became a public turning point.”
Adding insult to injury, Williams only found out that the actor formerly known as Marky Mark was making $1.5 million for the extra filming — while she was making $80 a day — when she read about it in the newspaper, along with the rest of the world.
After public backlash, Wahlberg ended up donating his whole fee to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund — but Williams says he never spoke to her about it.
And when asked about the donation, the former Funky Bunch member’s manager sent the magazine an email saying only: “I don’t think any of us want to talk about that ever again” with a winking emoji.
The reshoots were needed after Kevin Spacey was accused of sexually assaulting actor Anthony Rapp when he was 14, and was replaced on the film by Christopher Plummer.
“It wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask for money for the re-shoots. I just wanted to do the right thing on [Rapp’s] behalf,” the Brooklyn-based actress said.