Michelle Williams was hands-down one of the best dressed women on the Oscar red carpet. This white-silver Chanel was exquisite. After the Golden Globes debacle where she wore that daisy-and-seashell Valentino, Michelle needed a fashion win. The Chanel fits Michelle beautifully, it was glamorous and exciting, and Michelle added so much to the dress with her platinum pixie and her perfect makeup. Michelle was a trooper too – you could tell that the beading on the dress was super-heavy, but Michelle walked in that thing like a champ. Anything for fashion, bitches! My only complaint is that Michelle kind of ruined it with her mouth. Something funky was happening with her mouth during her red carpet interviews – she was talking in that little-girl voice that she sometimes pulls, and she even had a very “affected” lisp. I wondered if she had gotten something done to her lips or mouth, honestly, and I swear it looked like she had some lip herpe or something for a moment.
Another thing I loved: Michelle’s date. Her date was her BFF Busy Phillips. Old-school Dawson’s Creek in the hizzy! I don’t know who did Busy’s dress, but it’s nice too. I so love that Michelle brought a girlfriend as a date. That’s adorable, in my opinion. And you know Busy is probably a great Oscar date too!
These are just a few more photos of the ladies from the Oscars luncheon yesterday – I’ve already covered Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman and Helena Bonham Carter’s fashion picks. First up: Best Actress nominee Michelle Williams, wearing a Chanel blouse and skirt. The outfit has kind of a mod flare, which suits Michelle, and it also seems little-girlish, which is a fashion flavor that Michelle favors. I would love Michelle to start wearing suits and more business like attire for these kinds of events, but she’s not going to. Her vibe is “I’m a fragile little girl” and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Next: Amy Adams in Valentino. What’s with all of the redheads in white lately? First Nicole Kidman, then Julianne Moore and now Amy. Amy probably wears white the best out of all of those redheads, but I still think she’d look better in a jewel tone.
Hailee Steinfeld, Best Supporting Actress nominee in Moschino Cheap and Chic. The front is fine, and completely age appropriate, but if you look at the back (go here), it’s a reverse tuxedo. It’s really fug.
Annette Bening in black (I don’t know the designer). Pretty and simple.
Melissa Leo in “Staying Alive, Staying Alive, ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive…”
Jennifer Lawrence in Chloe. I like it – one of Jennifer’s better fashion picks for the awards season. I get the feeling that Jennifer is simply too young to really know what looks good on her body, don’t you?
Fresh from his unicorn-and-tears-filled breakup with Taylor Swift, Jake Gyllenhaal decided it would be best to not fly solo at the Golden Globes. So he brought a “friend”. More specifically, an “ex-girlfriend” named Jenny Lewis (in the photo above), who Jake allegedly dated many, many years ago, and who he has remained “friends” with. There was some muttering that Jenny and Jake might be back on, but that’s not the case:
Jake Gyllenhaal surprised everyone by showing up to the Golden Globes on Jan. 16 with some new arm candy, but Life & Style can exclusively reveal that the date was strictly platonic.
“Jake and ex-girlfriend Jenny Lewis went to the Globes as friends,” a source tells Life & Style. “Jake and Jenny haven’t dated for years. They’re still friends, and they went as friends.”
Jake found himself Hollywood’s hottest bachelor once again after splitting from country cutie Taylor Swift just weeks ago. Could Jake’s broken heart lead him to try to rekindle things with his former flame? Not a chance, according to the source.
“Jenny and Johnny [musician Johnathan Rice] have been together a long time,” says the source to Life & Style. Jenny, a member of the band Rilo Kiley, teamed up with her beau recently to create the group Jenny and Johnny. “They just released a record together in the summer. They haven’t broken up.”
So Jake brought a “just friends” date for the Globes, and the girl has a boyfriend who has no problem letting his girlfriend go to a high-profile event with another dude. Doesn’t that sound like a situation where the girlfriend gets a “pass” to do whatever she wants to with her best gay friend? Whatever, Jake was around a vagina, so now will have to stop asking him about whether or not he got to second base with Taylor Swift’s stuffed koala. RIGHT?!? So Jake put on his big-boy panties and butched it up at the after-parties, “flirting” with every available vagina he could find.
He didn’t win best actor, but Jake Gyllenhaal took the top prize for flirting the night of the Jan. 16 Golden Globe Awards.
“He was talking to so many girls!” a witness tells the new Us Weekly of the actor, 30, who ended his whirlwind romance with Taylor Swift, 21, just two weeks earlier.
“At CAA’s after–party, Jake macked on Maria Menounos — and he was definitely trying with Scarlett Johansson!”
The star — who brought ex Jenny Lewis, 35, to the show (he dated the singer in 2001) — also chatted up Mila Kunis, 27, that night.
Says the source, “Jake seemed interested, but he’s not her type.”
Later, he hit the Chateau Marmont and got close to Brokeback Mountain costar Michelle Williams, 30. Says an insider, “His hand was on her knee!”
Yeah, Jake should really keep his douche hands off of my Mila Kunis. As for Michelle Williams… well, that seems like his “type” right? He likes petite blondes. And Michelle has that wispy, Kiki-Dunst-quality that Jake seems to like too. Should Michelle and Jake happen? Sure. I don’t even care if Jake won’t touch her boobs. After Michelle’s appearance in this God-awful daisy dress, I feel like she needs to mix it up a little.
Now that you’ve heard all about the heterosexual flirting that went down, don’t you feel guilty for thinking that Jake and Ryan Seacrest were cruising each other during the red carpet interview? Yeah. I thought so.
As I mentioned yesterday, Michelle Williams is the February cover girl for Marie Claire. The above photo is an interesting one from the photo shoot – Michelle has nice legs, doesn’t she? Too bad she usually covers them up in matronly cream of wheat gowns and little-girl dresses. In the previous excerpts from Marie Claire, we heard a little bit about how Reese Witherspoon basically told Michelle to stop whining. Now Marie Claire has released more of the interview (here), and while there are no more details about that Reese stuff, Michelle does spend much of the interview talking about Heath Ledger and her daughter
On why she gives bad interviews: “An interview is like a minefield,” Williams says, rubbing her eyes wearily. “These are all the questions I’m asking myself, and some things are just too personal. It’s funny how little lines get drawn and something just rubs a little too raw. I find it hard to know exactly what to say; I’ve gotten a pretty secure footing, but I feel like I don’t have all the answers yet.”
Filling the void: “Very obviously, for me and for her, there’s a hole in our life.” Williams says. “Of course the natural inclination is to want to fill it and make it disappear, but what I’ve come to recently is that it’s impossible. Nothing will fit in that hole because what we want back we can’t get, which is this one person. I’m not going to rush anything and scamper around like a mad person and make myself crazy. I’m trying to be respectful of the absence. I’m not trying to fill it up. It is what it is.”
On the rumor that she and Ryan Gosling are dating: With a rueful smile, Williams shakes her head. “My poor mom really wants me to meet someone. I think she wanted to believe the Ryan Gosling rumor more than anybody,” she says.
On not knowing what she wants out of a relationship: “I don’t know what my version of a relationship or marriage is yet, because the typical model seems a little broken to me,” she admits. “At the same time, I was raised on all those princess fairy tales and I’m a romantic; I want to be a one-man girl. I took Matilda to Disney World recently and we saw all the princesses, and then she turned around and said, ‘OK, now I’d like to see where all the princes are.’ The Disney person said, ‘Nobody has ever asked me that before. There aren’t any princes here, honey.’” Williams sighs. “The idea that you can get everything you want in one person is destructive, and maybe when you accept that the number is closer to 50 or 60 or 70 percent, that’s when you can start to make some progress in choosing the right person. I don’t want to make a mistake that big, and that saddens me, because it’s harder to let yourself go. I can inflict any kind of injury on myself, but with my daughter, that’s not an option.”
On going back to work after Heath‘s death: “I didn’t work for a year. I needed to gather myself and put my life back together. I had to be dragged back to work, basically, because I finally had my life in some kind of order, and I didn’t know what would happen if I introduced work into it. I had forgotten that it was worth it.” That discovery has been crucial. “With the last three movies I’ve made, I’ve had the feeling of working at the edge of my abilities,” Williams says. “That’s an exhilarating and terrifying place to live, and I don’t go there easily. It has its rewards, but it’s not a dinner party. I’m constantly pushed up against the wall of what I’m capable of doing, and that can be an excruciating place to confront yourself. But I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that work gives you a good feeling about yourself. My work has seen me through a lot of situations, and if not for work, I would have stayed stuck in the experience. I’ve had something outside of myself to attend to, and it’s carried me through. It’s been invaluable, and I want to pass on that lesson to my daughter.”
I have to admit, I like how well-spoken Michelle is here. She seems very thoughtful and not as… I don’t know… “wispy” as she usually does. She seems stronger. Good for her.
Lastly… Michelle was at the National Board of Review Awards last night (photo below). She wore this black lace Oscar de la Renta… which I don’t like on her. The fit is off, the Mia Farrow hair isn’t good for the dress, and the skirt is too much for Michelle’s frame. That being said, it’s nice to see her showing some skin up top. She usually is covered up completely.
Marie Claire photos courtesy of Marie Claire. Additional pic courtesy of WENN.
Michelle Williams is the cover girl for the February issue of Marie Claire, likely to promote Blue Valentine. I kind of hate the cover shot. I think Michelle is a pretty girl, and she looks her best when she’s either doing a heavily stylized “mod” look, or when she’s just aiming for girl-next-door cute. This cover shot doesn’t play into her best style, that’s what I’m saying.
Anyway, there are some interview excerpts floating around, including Michelle talking about her plans to start a yoga group for single mothers. She says that she used yoga after Heath died, and she’s started a Yoga for Single Moms program in Boston.
On yoga: “Yoga gave me relief like nothing else; it made be a better person and a better mother. I could come back to my daughter anew. And then I started to think about how expensive it is to get a babysitter to take a yoga class, which makes it out of reach for so many women. The idea behind the programme is that if you can clear the time, we do the rest. It provides childcare while the mum is in the yoga class, and it’s all free.’
On Reese’s advice in a troubled time: “To give credit where credit is due, I was sharing a difficulty I was experiencing with Reese Witherspoon, and she said, ‘Yes, I understand, but think about how much more difficult this would be without the luxury of a reliable, steady income.”
On a changed perspective on life: “When things are difficult for me as a single parent, I always reflect on how much harder it would be if I didn’t have money—if I couldn’t afford a babysitter to go to yoga class or out to dinner with a girlfriend.”
I come out of this loving Reese Witherspoon more, right? You know what it was – Michelle was all “woe is me” and Reese was all “Stop whining, so many women have it so much harder. Appreciate what you have, chica.” And Reese is right.
Here are photos of Michelle over the weekend at an event for the NYT. Her dress is Chanel. I don’t hate it. But I do hate her hair now.
Photos courtesy of WENN. MC cover courtesy of The Fashion Spot.
Last week, Nightline aired an interview with Michelle Williams in which she shared the very personal information about how she coped when her daughter’s father, Heath Ledger, passed away from a drug interaction in early 2008. She explained that she kept thinking she’d see him again, and that she was sad once reality set in and she realized the finality of his death.
“In a strange way, I miss that year, because all those possibilities that existed then are gone. It didn’t seem unlikely to me that he could walk through a door or could appear behind a bush. It was a year of very magical thinking, and in some ways I’m sad to be moving further and further away from it.”
Only Williams isn’t happy with Nightline for excerpting those comments and using them to promote her interview. In an interview with The Daily Beast she explained that her comments were taken out of context:
Just recently I felt as if I did cross a line about all this. Yet if I’m going to do interviews and be in this world, I don’t want to seem as if I’m just taking a party line. I want to say something that is representative of who I am and what I’m thinking about and what matters to me in the same ways that I want to do that in my work because my work and my life do feed off each other. The two do go together. But when it comes to interviews, it all becomes rather tricky because I don’t want to say something without resonance but then I don’t want to go too far. I just had an experience with Nightline that got edited in such a way that seemed as if I did go too far. It was a three-hour interview that was edited in such a way that was devastating to me. I mean, I am still such the-good-girl. I want everybody to like me. I want everybody to be happy. I want to please people. So that desire in the moment overrode that “me” that is on top of myself, that “me” that is on top of a situation. Then they used those few quotes and the way they edited the piece to sell the interview, and it appeared as if I were breaking some kind of silence and sitting down with the express purpose to discuss something that is very private to me. So then I withdraw and I say, “OK, this subject is off limits if it is going to be convoluted and re-contextualized. I will close myself off as a torn paper might seal up its side or a streak of water stitch itself to silk.*” But then I sit down with you and feel compelled to talk about it. So it is a struggle.
There’s a very predictable formula to reporting celebrity interviews, and it involves taking the most sensational or revealing quotes and making them the center of the story. I’m not saying it’s fair at all, just that I’ve seen and done it for years and it seems like common knowledge to me. People don’t want to read or watch long interviews, they want to get the bullet points and move on.
When Yahoo’s OMG reported this story, they suggested that anyone would go “with the most compelling stuff first,” but their commenters took offense at that. I don’t know how Nightline promoted this interview, like whether they made it seem so sad or ominous, but the fact is that she did say those things. Michelle is a gentle, sensitive soul and she reveals in that Daily Beast interview that she loves to read and has found solace in poetry. If there are parts of her life or her grief that she doesn’t want to be sensationalized, she should try to keep them to herself in interviews. Agree or disagree, this is way the media works and an actress can learn to censor herself, even when she’s talking to someone for a few hours.
*The references Michelle makes to torn paper and streaks of water are from a poem about grief that she read at the beginning of the interview. It was from a book of poems that the journalist gave her called “The Pruned Tree” by Robert Moss.
Photos are from 12/13 and 12/7/10, credit: WENN.com and Fame Pictures
Michelle Williams is having a good moment. Blue Valentine’s rating was changed from an NC-17 to an R. Blue Valentine is getting some serious awards buzz, and just this morning, she was nominated for a lead actress Golden Globe. And to add to the goodness, she’s no longer got funky too-blonde hair! YAY! These are photos of Michelle at yet another Blue Valentine screening last night in NYC. The dress is Dior, and I kind of hate it – on Michelle. I just don’t find it flattering on her figure, and it makes her upper arms look heavy (which they are not), and it‘s much too short for winter. It doesn’t even look like she’s wearing panty hose either. Ugh. But I love the hair – her hair has been looking hideous lately, I think because she had to dye it white-blonde to play Marilyn Monroe. But now she chopped some off and added some roots to the mix, and it looks so much better.
Note to Goop: this is how you should be doing your blonde.
It’s such a proud day for ladies! We are no longer being slut-shamed by the MPAA (the Hollywood ratings board) for just wanting to see “getting ours” represented in film. Blue Valentine’s NC-17 rating has just been overturned – it was widely thought that the sex scene between Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams were just too raw, too realistic, too exposed, too authentic, and that’s why Blue Valentine ended up with an NC-17 rating. That rating would have severely crippled Blue Valentine’s prospective Oscar campaign – many consider both Gosling and Williams heavy contenders in the acting categories – and would have hampered any chance for the film to make money. But you know who produced the oral-sex-athon? Harvey Weinstein. Harvey was all “You’re going to slut shame my film? Prepare to die, bitches.”
The MPAA’s ratings appeals board has overturned the NC-17 rating, which it originally gave to the Weinstein Co.’s marital drama Blue Valentine.
The movie, which will be released Dec. 31., will now be rated R.
In 2008, the Weinstein Co. waged a similar campaign, successfully appealing an NC-17 that was given to Kevin Smith’s comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
It remains a relative rarity, though. According to Time magazine, over the past decade 21 NC-17 films sought an R-rating on appeal, but only Zack was given the less restrictive rating.
1. Old farts at the MPAA are nervous bitches, and if you old-fart-shame them about their slut-shaming, they might just cave.
2. The MPAA rating system needs a serious overhaul. I doubt it will happen now that Harvey has gotten his way, but there are serious problems like this that arise every few years, although this was the “sexiest” MPAA scandal in a few years. Notably, I remember how Roger Ebert and other critics were pissed that Whale Rider got a PG-13 rating – they claimed it should be a more family friendly G-rating. It’s time for a movement!
3. More people will see Blue Valentine. It will be in more theatres. This rating scandal was also really good (somewhat free) publicity for the film. Now the film seems “naughty” and “dirty”.
4. Michelle and Ryan will probably get nominated for more awards now.
5. More GOSDONG. Now and forever. Maybe not, but we’re closer.
6. Sad, depressing, tragic female orgasms are now somewhat welcome on screen. Sluts.
Last night was yet another screening/premiere for Blue Valentine. This one was notable, however, because both Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling (the two leads) actually showed up. Ryan is hypnotizing me with his gorgeous eyes. I can barely see past them, honestly. Michelle is… ugh. The hair. The hair looks slightly better, but it’s still bad overall. The dress is Azzaro – and while I have to applaud her for not doing the old-lady, cream-of-wheat style, but I don’t love the dress. Still, the overall effect is rather cute.
By the way, unless you live in a major city, you probably won’t get the chance to see Blue Valentine, because of its NC-17 rating (most theatres don’t want to touch it). However, now that some people have seen it, we’re getting a better idea as to why the subject matter is so “controversial” that it needs an explicit rating: oral sex. Specifically, Michelle gets hers. What is it about a female being pleasured that makes stuffy old dudes whip out their bitch? Anyway, PopEater has a lengthy discussion about why Blue Valentine won’t be seen by many, and why the ratings system is screwed up, etc. Just beware though – that piece is full of SPOILERS for both Blue Valentine and Black Swan.
Michelle Williams has progressively been going for a lighter and lighter blonde for months now – and it has reached the point where her hair now just looks white. At first I thought it was merely a styling choice, in an effort perhaps to look more like cream of wheat. And then I wondered if it was just about the roots, because she was playing Marilyn Monroe – maybe there was some tricky wig-or-extensions drama. But that film is done, and Michelle didn’t get rid of the white blonde. If anything, it’s just even more white.
Here are more shots – these photos are from a London screening of Blue Valentine, which Kate Winslet attended. Apparently, she’s a huge fan of Michelle. Nice.
