The August issue of Vanity Fair has a fascinating article about Heath Ledger called “The Last of Heath”, all about his insomnia and sleeping pill usage, his own thoughts about his career, and his relationship with Michelle Williams and daughter Matilda. The issue went to print before Michael Jackson died, and Page Six is claiming that the stuff about Heath’s prescription drug usage is in poor taste, but I don’t really see it. Page Six pulled some of the most tabloid-friendly quotes, but reading the full excerpt on Vanity Fair’s site, it seems more like a tribute to Heath’s life, and an attempt to tell the real story about what Heath was going through in the last years of his life. Here are some of the most interesting parts:

Heath Cleaned Up His Act: Cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, who worked with Ledger on his last film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, says Ledger “used to smoke marijuana on a regular basis, like probably 50 percent of Americans.” But after it became an issue, Ledger “went clean as a whistle.” And vocal coach Gerry Grennell, who worked and lived with the actor during the filming of The Dark Knight, says Ledger even stopped drinking: “Heath would happily go to the bar, buy a round of drinks for friends, and come back and have a soda or juice, never once drinking alcohol.”

Insomnia, Flu and Sleeping Pills: Ledger’s use of sleeping medication to combat chronic insomnia at the end of his life was of more concern to Grennell. “I’d say, ‘If you can possibly bear it to stop taking the medications, do, because they don’t seem to be doing you any good.’ He agreed. It is very difficult for me to imagine how close he came to not taking them.”

Ledger would typically spend night after night awake, diverting himself with time killers, Biskind reports, such as re-arranging the furniture in whatever space he happened to be living in at the moment. Grennell coached him in the Alexander Technique, which helped him to sleep for a few hours at a time, but he still struggled.

“Everyone has a different view of how he passed away,” Grennell tells Biskind. “From my perspective, and knowing him as well as I did, and being around him as much as I was, it was a combination of exhaustion, sleeping medication … and perhaps the aftereffects of the flu. I guess his body just stopped breathing.”

Relationship with Michelle Williams and daughter Matilda: Terry Gilliam [says] that the romance between Ledger and [Michelle] began to unravel during the Oscar campaign for Brokeback Mountain. “The whole machinery started growing up around them,” Gilliam says. “That was the moment when it changed, when he realized, Uh-oh. We perceive the world differently. He didn’t care about things like those awards.”

According to Pecorini, “Heath was always blaming himself [about the relationship], asking, What did I do wrong?” Adds Gilliam, “Because he’s a much nicer person than I am, he really thought he could do the right thing. He was trying to be decent and graceful, give her whatever she wanted—the house, every f-cking thing. But once it started going south, it went very quickly. He was overwhelmed by lawyers, and there were more and more of them, as if they were breeding. I said, ‘This is bullshit. Heath, just end it. Get out—it’s bad. You’ve got to just walk away from it.’ The stakes kept going up. He wouldn’t listen to any of us.” As Ledger’s relationship with Williams unraveled, and the pair started dealing with lawyers and custody issues, according to Gilliam, Ledger fell apart. “The thing that really made Heath snap” was legal wrangling over his daughter, Matilda, Gilliam says.

Heath’s Ambivalence Towards Stardom, Playing The Joker: Ledger’s friend and agent, Steven Alexander, tells Biskind that Heath “was always hesitant to be in a summer blockbuster, with the dolls and action figures and everything else that comes with one of those movies. He was afraid it would define him and limit his choices.” According to friends of Ledger’s, one of the reasons he agreed to do Dark Knight was that the unusually long shoot would give him an excuse to turn down other offers. Alexander tells Biskind that Ledger had a pay-or-play deal on The Dark Knight—meaning he’d get compensated no matter what—so he felt he had the freedom to do whatever he wanted as the Joker. According to Pecorini, Ledger hoped his performance would be so far-out he’d be fired, and thus become the beneficiary of a lengthy, paid vacation.

[From Vanity Fair]

I found the Michelle Williams stuff interesting, but I have some nit-picking with Vanity Fair. Throughout the piece, they refer to Michelle as Heath’s wife, which she never was. They were engaged, but never married. That simple fact doesn’t limit their relationship, or make their split any more or less of a factor in Heath’s state of mind in his last year. The report seems to indicate that Michelle really had strong feelings about how much time Matilda spent with Heath - which makes me suspect Michelle had serious concerns about Heath’s state of mind. Even though I think it’s nice that so many of Heath’s friends and colleagues gave interviews about Heath, it’s interesting that Michelle was not interviewed. I’d imagine her take on that time period would be a lot different.

Heath Ledger is shown on 9/4/07 and 3/4/06. Credit: PRPhotos

Michelle Williams and director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) have been dating for less than a year, sort of. We don’t really know when they started dating, but they seemed to start really enjoy spending quality time together last summer. Michelle seemed to be moving on in her life at her own pace after Heath Ledger’s death - and Spike Jonze quickly seemed part of that. Spike has even been photographed with Michelle and Matilda. And why shouldn’t he be? No one expected Michelle to don black widow’s garb for life. She’s a young woman and a young mother, and it’s healthy for her to move on.

Star Magazine is reporting that over the course of the past year, Spike and Michelle have grown extremely close - to the point where Spike wants to marry Michelle and raise Matilda as his own. If this is the case, it would be Spike’s second marriage. His first was to director Sofia Coppola - from 1999 to 2003. Star has more:

Spike Jonze adores Michelle Williams’ daughter, Matilda, and he’s made the former Dawson’s Creek star smile again after the devastating January 2008 death of the tot’s dad, Heath Ledger.

So Michelle, 28, is happily planning to take a trip to the altar with her Being John Malkovich director beau of almost a year — as early as this summer, sources tell Star!

“They’re in love and absolutely thrilled with each other,” says a source. “They don’t see why they should wait much longer.”

Spike, 39, is already treating 3-year-old Matilda as if she’s officially his own. “Spike loves being with Matilda. He’s teaching her to skateboard and to ride a bike,” says a source.

“He never makes Michelle feel like taking care of her is a burden, because he truly thinks of them all as a family.”

[From Star Magazine]

Spike (real name: Adam Spiegel) is a man of many personas - sometimes, he seems like a guy’s guy, because he’s so into all of that BMX and Jackass stuff. Other times, he seems very sweet and shy. God knows what he’s really like, but I suspect he probably does love Michelle and Matilda. If they’re not already engaged, I bet they’re both thinking about it. God bless.

Here’s Michelle and Spike in Brooklyn with Matilda on April 10th, and sharing a kiss (alone) on March 22nd. Images thanks to Pacific Coast News.

Michelle Williams and her daughter with Heath Ledger, 3-year-old Matilda, did not attend the Oscars this week. There has been a great deal of speculation about whether there s a conflict between the Ledger family and Heath’s former partner. I don’t think there is, I think Michelle feels a genuine desire to be away from the celebrity lifestyle, and to protect her daughter from it. Here’s an except from an interview she gave promoting her independent film Wendy and Lucy where she talks about her need for privacy.

Williams is widely – and with some justification – regarded as one of the most promising young actresses of her generation. Yet, since last May, she has not made a single film.

She has, for now at least, given up acting for a life of, as she puts it, “cooking, baking, cleaning and sewing” as a stay-at-home single mother to three-year-old Matilda.

“As a young actress, you feel this intense pressure to work,” she says. “Everybody says ‘The time is now’. But I can be 28 and take a year off. Hopefully there’ll still be something there to go back to.”

What remains unclear is whether, if there didn’t turn out to be anything to go back to, she would actually mind. “Now [being a successful film actress] comes with so much baggage,” she says. “It has lost its appeal for me. It used to be a refuge and now it’s a hassle.” She is clearly torn.

While she believes the “working mother thing is kind of a fallacy – it’s hard to do both things well”, she worries that her life “might end as a pile of dishes” if she doesn’t soon get back in front of the cameras.

I admire Michelle for staying at home and caring for her daughter at a time when it must have been so hard for both of them. Michelle had just come away from her own Best Supporting Actress nomination, taking this time off has been a genuine career sacrifice for her. She is not A-list in the sense that her career will be waiting for her at the same level it was prior to her break.

Williams has long been famous for shunning celebrity culture. She moved to Brooklyn years before it became very cool and says she feels “very detached” from Hollywood.

She has no plans to attend Sunday’s Oscars ceremony in LA and says she would never consider living there.

“I wouldn’t raise [Matilda] there. For all the obvious reasons – being the daughter of…,” she pauses. “Being an actor’s daughter. It’s a town that’s about one thing and I want her to have options.”

She says she’d like her daughter to be a doctor when she grows up although, right now, if Matilda gets her way, she’ll be a cowgirl.

Yet Williams has not totally removed herself from showbusiness circles. She is currently romantically linked to the film director Spike Jonze.

“I don’t really want to talk about that,” she says, when the subject of Jonze comes up.

Daily Telegraph London

If that gorgeous little girl inherits her father and mother’s looks, I can see that she would absolutely be pushed into acting in Los Angeles, by casting agents who want to nab the exclusive of getting Heath’s daughter in her first role to gain attention, for their own gain and not Matilda’s. I can’t help but think that for a 3-year-old, it’s a bit early to be encouraging them to follow any one career path, although we all want our children to do their best in their endeavors. Michelle isn’t quoted directly so perhaps she was responding in a joking manner, or to a direct question, or maybe Matilda currently has a strong interest in playing ‘doctor’. Maybe she’s just a pushy mom who wants her daughter to be a doctor!

Michelle and Matilda are shown out in NY on 8/19/08. Thanks to Bauergriffinonline for these photos

Michelle Williams has spoken for the first time about Heath Ledger’s death and how it has affected her. She is promoting her film Wendy and Lucy, filmed in 2007 in the months following their break up, but before Heath’s death. Williams says that every day that passes her grief over Heath’s death gets worse.

Williams is jovial and chatty, until the conversation turns to Heath. You can see it’s still difficult for her to talk about him, and she hasn’t done so publicly until now. The first time Ledger’s name comes up, she bursts into tears. “It’s so sad,” Williams says. When she’s asked about how she’s been doing in the past year, she’s silent for a very long time. “I guess it’s always changing,” she says. There’s another pause. “What else can I say?” Her voice is breathy and fragile, and she takes a few gulps of air. “I just wake up each day in a slightly different place—grief is like a moving river, so that’s what I mean by ‘it’s always changing’.” She stops again. “It’s a strange thing to say”—her words unravel slowly, her eyes tear up—”because I’m at heart an optimistic person, but I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It’s just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone. In some ways it gets worse. That’s what I would say.”

Michelle also talks candidly about her anger at the paparazzi and fears for her daughter’s safety:

As she walks back to her car, Williams spots an SUV parked on the side of the road. Is it the paparazzi? No, but her heart still sinks at the thought. The paparazzi are one topic that gets her so riled up, she spits out curse words. “It burns a fire inside of me, the s––– that I’ve seen people do to get at me or my daughter,” she says. “I won’t forget it, and I won’t support it. I don’t want my daughter growing up feeling spied on or threatened.” She can’t understand how many more pictures people need of her holding a coffee cup in one hand and Matilda in the other. Williams is especially enraged at female photographers, because she thinks women should be protective of mothers. She tried to give a particularly aggressive paparazzo career advice recently. “I said, ‘You’re better than this. Look at you! You’re young, you’re able-bodied, you have a brightness in your eyes. You’re above this.’ But you know what? She didn’t go away.”

[From Newsweek.]

Michelle says that if the intense interest in her personal life doesn’t cease she will give up acting, saying that she ‘likes’ acting, but now it comes with ‘baggage’. I get the feeling that she is saying she likes to act, but feels protective of her daughter. She describes acting as giving her self esteem. She probably also understands that as time passes we’ll forget about Heath Ledger and the interest in her and Matilda will be less intense.

Michelle says that she doesn’t want to work while Matilda is in school, to give her routine. Whether this means she will give up acting entirely or just work when she can isn’t specified.

There’s a scene in the film where Michelle’s character Wendy goes into a store and picks up a tabloid with Jennifer Aniston on the cover, where we are sort of acknowledging her as ‘Michelle the celebrity’ rather than ‘Michelle the actress’. In a film about the loss of the lead character’s best friend, this is like saying ‘yeah, she’s in a sad film following a sad time in her life, now lets go back to the movie’.

Michelle Williams is shown at a Wendy and Lucy screening in Hollywood on 11/8/08 and in stills from the film. Credit: WENN

Actress Michelle Williams’ dad, stock broker Larry Williams, has agreed to be extradited to the US from Australia to face tax evasion charges after fighting extradition for over two years. It is thought that he owes $1.5 million in back taxes to the US government from unreported book royalties and international seminar fees.

Larry Williams was first arrested for tax evasion in Australia in May, 2006. He successfully appealed the ruling in March of last year and avoided extradition at the time. In April of this year Australia’s high court ruled that it was constitutional to extradite Williams, and over six months later he has finally agreed to return and face charges. Williams says that he will fight the charges and denies that he’s been trying to avoid paying taxes by living overseas.

Williams won the 1987 World Cup Championship of Futures Trading by creating $1.14 million from a real investment of just $10,000. It was the highest earnings ever in the competition. His daughter Michelle won the same competition in 1997 at the age of 16 after earning $100,000 from a $10,000 investment.

Some of William’s published books include 1999’s Long-Term Secrets to Short-Term Trading, 2000’s Day Trade Futures Online, and 2003’s The Right Stock at the Right Time: Prospering in the Coming Good Years.

I wonder how much of an embarrassment this is to Michelle and if she thinks her dad is justified in fighting extradition proceedings for two years. His website for his consulting business, IReallyTrade, is still available. There is a personal message from Larry along with plenty of photos of seminars he conducted in Japan and Singapore. It seems like this guy has been avoiding paying taxes for a long time and will finally face the music. At least he’ll get to see his granddaughter.

[Details from AP via Huffington Post and Wikipedia]

Michelle Williams is shown at the 2008 AFI Fest “Last Chance Harvey Screening” in Hollywood on 11/8/08. Credit: PRPhotos. Photo of Larry Williams from his website

Actress Michelle Williams, 28, wore a gorgeous pearl-colored dress with criss-cross panels to a screening of her film Synecdoche, New York in New York City last night. Mother of one Williams has quietly been dating the director of the film, Spike Jonze. The two have managed to mostly avoid photographers and seem to have taken pains to hide their relationship, but they didn’t hold back at the after party for the film last night. People reports that they were making out like a couple of teenagers with a curfew:

After attending a Cinema Society screening of their new film, Synecdoche, New York in Manhattan Wednesday night, the couple walked out of the auditorium with Jonze caressing Williams’ back and wrapping his arm around her waist.

The pair held hands as they walked through the lobby, where they met up with Synecdoche costar Catherine Keener. While the two women chatted and munched on popcorn, Jonze snaked his arm around Williams’ waist again.

“He couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her,” said an onlooker. “It was very cute.”

But the sparks really started to fly later that night, when they headed to the Gramercy Hotel’s rooftop club for the Mulberry-sponsored afterparty.

While the two – who have been romantically linked since this summer – talked with friends, they stood so close they were “practically spooning,” said one fellow guest.

And later, when they decided to leave the bash at around 1 a.m., Williams and Jonze shared a mini makeout session – on their way to the elevator.

[From People]

Good for them! It sounds like they’re in the honeymoon phase of their relationship. Reports first surfaced that they were a couple around the end of July, less than three months ago. They seem to not be able to get enough of each other, and hopefully it will turn into a long term stable relationship if it’s right for both of them.

Everyone was worried about Williams after Heath Ledger passed away from an accidental prescription drug interaction this January. Ledger was her ex boyfriend and the father of her now almost three year old daughter, Matilda. Little Matilda is the splitting image of her dad. It seems that her mother may have found love and happiness again after so much tragedy.

Photo credit: WENN and Fame. Header image from Bauergriffinonline taken at Cannes on 5/23/08.

After what seems like an incredibly long time, Heath Ledger’s estate is nearly settled, with the entire thing going to his two-year-old daughter Matilda. The Ledger family says Michelle Williams never had to make a claim on Heath’s will because they have “gifted” every penny to Matilda.

EVERY penny of Heath Ledger’s estimated $20 million will go to his little girl Matilda Rose, Ledger’s father says. In his will, which has been probated behind closed doors at the Supreme Court in Perth, Ledger left everything to his parents and three sisters. Many observers expected his former partner Michelle Williams to lodge a claim on the will, which was signed by the actor on April 12, 2003, two years before Matilda was born.

The will left half of the estate to Ledger’s sisters, Kate and Olivia Ledger and Ashleigh Bell. The remainder was to go to his parents, Kim Ledger and Sally Bell, after debts had been paid. But Ledger’s father, Kim, says there will be no challenge and the family has given everything to Matilda. “There is no claim,” Mr Ledger said. “Our family has gifted everything to Matilda.”

Some estimates have put the value of the Heath Ledger estate at up to $20 million. But Adelaide accountant Mark Dyson, who is an executor of the estate, said he could not reveal what Matilda would inherit. The will, filed at the Manhattan equivalent of Australia’s Family Court after Ledger died in New York on January 22 from a cocktail of prescription drugs, puts the bulk of his assets into a trust.

[From Perth Now]

Michelle Williams’ father, who is a well-known stock market trader, had had a beef with the Ledger family over some of the financial details in Ledger’s will that didn’t make sense.

Despite the millions of dollars in property in Ledger’s trusts, his will lists assets and cash of just $145,000, with no mention of mansions or millions.

Williams’ father has previously challenged the grieving Ledger family to publicly state the value of their son’s fortune.

Larry Williams, one of the world’s best-known stock market traders, said he was perplexed that documents filed in a New York court listed Ledger’s assets at just $145,000.

“It’s real simple: just come clean with everything,” he said.

[From Perth Now]

It does seem that Heath’s affairs (and finances) were a bit out of order, to say the least. He hadn’t updated his will since Matilda was born, which added a lot of complications. And clearly he had some sort of assets worth a good deal more than $145,000, as it’s estimated Matilda will probably inherit something around $16.5 million in U.S. dollars.

Hopefully this wraps up any lingering tensions between the Ledger and Williams families and they can all continue to be involved in Matilda’s life.

Michelle Williams and Spike Jonze are shown at a photocall for Synecdoche, New York in Cannes on 5/23/08. Credit: Axelle/Bauergriffinonline.com
Actress Michelle Williams is reportedly moving beyond the grief of losing her ex-fiance, the late Heath Ledger, and is cautiously becoming more serious with indie film director Spike Jonze. Sources say that Jonze makes Michelle very happy, and it looks like the new couple have been spending a lot of time together. OK! Magazine says that Jonze was spotted shopping for groceries at a market near Williams’ Brooklyn apartment.

Although Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger had broken up before his sudden death last January, the shock of losing her former partner and father to her daughter, Matilda Rose, has had her looking somber for months.

But lately, the smile has crept slowly back onto Michelle’s face, perhaps because she’s quietly dating director Spike Jonze.

“Michelle is starting to have her old glow back,” a source tells OK!. “It’s the Michelle we were used to seeing when she and Heath just had Matilda and they were on cloud nine. Her eyes light up again. She’s finally coming out of the shock of losing Heath.”

Spike and Michelle met back in 2006 when she was up for a role in his movie Where the Wild Things Are (she got the part but later withdrew) and then again more recently on the set of Synecdoche, New York in 2007.

And lately, the two have been spending a lot more time together: Spike was recently spotted at a convenience store in Brooklyn, buying a toothbrush, toothpaste, eggs and pancake mix before heading back to Michelle’s home.

“Spike said he was visiting his girlfriend and just needed to get a few odds and ends,” a local tells OK!. “They were going to try and make breakfast for her daughter.”

[From OK! Magazine]

I really like Michelle Williams. She’s a decent actress and appears to be a very devoted mom. She hasn’t really been linked to anyone since her breakup with Heath, and if she’s introduced Spike to her daughter, I would imagine that this relationship has some legs. She’s the anti-Kate Hudson: I could never imagine her letting her boyfriend du jour hang out with Matilda. I hope she finds some peace and happiness with Jonze.

When I first heard the story that Michelle Williams, 27, was dating director Spike Jonze, 38, I was pretty skeptical. The rumor seemed to originate in Star Magazine and was based on the two sharing a goodbye kiss that lasted too long outside Jonze’s apartment. Michelle and Spike worked together on the film Synecdoche, New York, and there wasn’t much evidence that they were a couple. The late Heath Ledger’s best friend from Australia, Trevor DiCarlo, was staying at Michelle’s place for a while and I guessed that he was her new love interest, not Jonze.

Jonze and Williams were spotted together at the airport last week boarding a private plane to Oregon with her daughter, Matilda, 33 months. They were also seen kissing at dinner in LA on August 2. It looks pretty obvious at this point that they’re a couple.

Michelle Williams and director Spike Jonze, who were recently spotted getting cozy together in Brooklyn, have taken their relationship bicoastal.

The twosome shared an intimate dinner at Little Dom’s in Los Angeles’ Los Feliz neighborhood on Aug. 2. According to a fellow diner, Williams, 27, and Jonze, 38, started off their late-night meal sitting across from each other. “During dinner they would lean in and kiss each other over the table,” the diner says.

By the end of the meal, Williams had hopped into Jonze’s lap and the pair were smooching, according to onlooker.

Jonze, the ex-husband of Sofia Coppola, produced the actress’ upcoming film Synecdoche, New York. At the Brooklyn deli, the director “had his arm around [Williams] and kissed her on the cheeks, then on the lips,” PEOPLE reported recently.

[From People]

Jonze was married to director Sofia Coppola from 1999 - 2003 and was briefly linked to actress Drew Barrymore last year.

Michelle doesn’t seem like the PDA type to me at all and I’m really surprised that she would sit on a guy’s lap at a restaurant and start kissing him like that. She must really be crazy for him, and it sounds like the feeling is mutual. Jonze must be the affectionate type and these two sound like they’re head over heels for each other.

Michelle Williams and Spike Jonze are shown at a photocall for Synecdoche, New York in Cannes on 5/23/08. Credit: Axelle/Bauergriffinonline.com

Michelle Williams holds her stomach on the set of Shutter Island in Boston, 6/29/08. Credit: Fame
On Thursday Jaybird reported that Michelle Williams, 27, is said to be dating director Spike Jonze and that they were even seen kissing outside his apartment. The story originated in notoriously wrong Star Magazine, though, and the kiss is described as “closed mouth on the corner of [the] lips.” Since Williams is an actress and Jonze is a director who worked with her on the much-anticipated film version of Where the Wild Things Are, it seems a little premature to say they’re dating just because they casually kissed each other goodbye. It wouldn’t be the first time Star jumped to wild conclusions.

It seems much more likely that Williams is dating Heath Ledger’s best friend from childhood, a strapping 29 year-old guy named Trevor DiCarlo who also grew up in Perth, Australia. They were photographed together a few times and DiCarlo has even been staying at William’s house and once answered the door shirtless. It’s possible they’re just friends and that Trevor is lending support to Michelle in this difficult time. I hope not though because this guy is hot:

Trevor DiCarlo, 29, who grew up with Heath in Perth, Australia, has been spotted out with her and has been a regular guest at Michelle’s Brooklyn, NY home - the house she once shared with [Heath].

They’ve been dining and going for walks, with Trevor wheeling the stroller for 2-year-old Matilda, the daughter of Heath and Michelle…

Trevor, without a shirt and dressed only in khaki shorts, appeared right at home recently when he answered the door at Michelle’s house. He would not comment on their relationship and Michelle’s rep says they’re just friends.

A neighbor, however, confirmed that Trevor has been staying at Michelle’s place and that the pair eat at a nearby pizza place

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, August 4, 2008]

It’s got to be hard for Michelle to see Heath’s face plastered all over in giant advertisements for The Dark Knight. Whether his friend is just visiting and needed a place to stay while in NY or if he’s a new love interest it seems to be a positive thing that she has him around. A lot of you wished her well in your comments on her maybe-relationship with Spike Jonze, and no matter who she’s dating she’s keeping busy and seeing friends and that seems to be what matters.

Note: I tried to find the photo for this article that the National Enquirer uses, but I couldn’t figure out the agency after several tries and was unable to buy it. You can see it in the Enquirer that’s out now with Lisa Marie Presley’s “secret shame” on the cover. The guy is a muscular bald guy with cool glasses and colorful tattoos.