Michelle: I Nearly Stopped Acting After Heath Died

After Heath Ledger died, Michelle Williams wasn't sure she would ever want to work again. "That seemed like a really smart idea," she tells GQ in a new profile. "You just want to be able to walk out of your house and turn your face to the sun and stumble down a corner where you have some memory, and you're not really allowed any of that," thanks to the paparazzi. "It was making me crazy. I felt like I was going crazy. It was too much—trying to deal with what had happened and trying to deal with what was at our doorstep. I just felt trapped."

She recalls meeting Ledger for the first time—"the circumstances … were cosmic or something"—but won't discuss how she heard about his death. Eventually, Blue Valentine—a film she had committed to making years before, at age 21—pulled her back into acting. Williams also reveals that a year or two ago, she was searching hard for a new life partner so that Matilda would have siblings close in age. "I wanted that for her. But I couldn't make that happen. And now that she's 6 that isn't even a possibility anymore," Williams says. "For whatever reason, that's not our luck, or our path." Click for the full profile. (More Michelle Williams stories.)