Here is Michelle Williams at the Blue Valentine premiere at the London Film Festival today. I have to admit, even though the dress is totally old-lady-doily, I kind of like it. Is it very “1950s party dress”? Sure. Do I think it looks like something Peggy would have worn in Season 2 of Mad Men? Sure. But, I still like it. The color is great, the cut is decent, and she jazzed it up nicely (?) with the leopard print shoes. Unlike Hilary Swank, Michelle doesn’t do matchy-matchy, and yet… is the leopard print too out of place with this dress? Eh. Maybe. Wait… is one shoe leopard print and the other is striped?!? Is she wearing two different patterned shoes?

But really, who is paying attention to the outfit when there is this hair situation? This is… not good. She looks like a washed-out Hobbit. I think Michelle has gone this ultra-platinum color because she’s currently playing Marilyn Monroe. But I’m pretty sure they would just make her wear a wig – so why the platinum? She needs another color to mix it up in there, because this is not flattering at all. And I’m not crazy about the little flip either.

Anyway, Ryan Gosling wasn’t there. BOO. He’s still shooting Drive in LA. If he had come to London, I’m sure he would have said something about her hair. Since he didn’t go, I have to. Maybe we can call up Jennifer Aniston and get her to make a quip about Billy Idol.

Photos of Michelle in London on October 15, 2010. Credit: WENN.

Above is a photo of Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. She will be playing Monroe in My Week With Marilyn, a film about a week on the London set of The Prince and the Showgirl back in the 1950s, told from the perspective of an assistant on the production. It’s apparently based on a true story, I guess. And I guess it got made because so many people still have a weird Marilyn fetish. Actually, I can kind of understand why this film is being made in general, just because it probably is the kind of juicy, interesting actory story that people love – Ken Branagh is playing Laurence Olivier, after all. What bothers me, however, is that I think Michelle will end up making a pretty crappy Marilyn. Yes, she kind of looks like her, but Marilyn could do vivacious and bubbly and bombshell, where Michelle… excels at drama. Eh. Here’s more about the film:

Julia Ormond is playing Vivien Leigh after Catherine Zeta-Jones dropped out, and Dougray Scott is playing Arthur Miller. Filming starts today in London on the feature, which is shooting for 7 weeks at Pinewood and on location in and around the city. Michelle Williams is cast as Marilyn Monroe alongside Kenneth Branagh (Laurence Oliver), Judi Dench (Dame Sybil Thorndike), Dominic Cooper, Emma Watson and Derek Jacobi with Eddie Redmayne playing Colin Clark, the young assistant on the set of the 1956 film The Prince and the Showgirl who helped the star escape her pressure-cooker Hollywood career for a brief week. Directed by Simon Curtis (BBC TV’s Cranford) and produced by David Parfitt (Shakespeare In Love), the film is based on Clark’s diaries and has been adapted for the screen by Adrian Hodges. Parfitt’s Trademark Films is the production company, while The Weinstein Company is financing and distributing. BBC Films and Lipsync Productions are co-financing the film, which was developed in association with the UK Film Council and BBC Films.

[From Deadline]

You know what’s weird? When Marilyn filmed The Prince and the Showgirl, she was already married to Arthur Miller, and he came to London for the shoot as well. And yet I don’t think there will be an actor portraying Miller – strange. Oh, Dougray Scott is playing Miller. My bad… although that’s really strange casting. At least Branagh gets to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming Olivier.

Header photo courtesy of Deadline.

I knew W Magazine had put Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams – costar in the upcoming Blue Valentine - on the cover of their October issue, but I had no idea it would be this hot. I just… wow. They really have chemistry together, don’t they? Good for Michelle. She strikes me as a wall flower/wilting flower most of the time, but it’s good to see her find some bombshell moves and sex it up.

Regarding their film – I thought it was just a tearjerker romance, but apparently it’s got some kind of edge to it? According to sources, it’s about “David and Cindy, a couple who have been together for several years but who are at an impasse in their relationship. While Cindy has blossomed into a woman with opportunities and options, David is still the same person he was when they met, and he is unable to accept either Cindy’s growth or his lack of it. Innovatively structured, the narrative unfolds in two distinct time frames, juxtaposing scenes of first love and youthful sexuality with those of disenchantment and discord.” Hm…

By the way, just a word about W Magazine – I like that they’re doing more multiple-star covers. Jon Hamm and Rebecca Hall a few months ago, and that weird overly-Photoshopped Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston shoot in the Spring. W has a new editor now, but I’m glad to see they’re keeping with this two-star cover thing. It’s nice to see male stars on the cover of a fashion magazine, in a highly stylized editorial.

W Magazine photos courtesy of Hollywood Dame.

These are photos of Michelle Williams promoting Meek’s Cutoff at the Venice Film Festival. Ugh. Like a big bowl of cream of wheat. I guess the color is technically “pale grey” or “eggshell.” But it just looks like a big steaming pile of bland. And taken with Michelle’s short, platinum hair… this is just a horrible look. Michelle turns 30 years old in a few days. That’s a “3” and a “0” in case you thought she looked like a grandma in this dress. She seriously looks a little Meg Ryan-esque, and I mean that in the bad way, as in she looks like a fading star in her early fifties who is trying to cover up some botched plastic surgery. Michelle has a cute figure too – I don’t see why she felt the need to wear something so unflattering and old-ladyish. Not only that, but that dumb bow looks like she just tucked a tissue into her collar. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

As for the film, I actually thought that Michelle was promoting Blue Valentine, the romantic drama that Michelle did with her maybe-part-time-lover Ryan Gosling. Instead, she’s promoting this Meek’s Cutoff, which Variety describes as “a low-budget period Western with a bracing feminist spin. Re-creating a desolate stretch of the Oregon Trail with a meticulous sense of physical detail, this beautifully hand-crafted picture welds… subtle political concerns and eye for rugged American landscapes to a spare yet classically involving tale of a wayward wagon team.” Eh. You couldn’t pay me to watch it, but I can’t stand Westerns, nor Western-revisionist histories, so I’m not the target audience.

Speaking of Michelle’s part-time lover, Gosling was performing with his band Dead Man’s Bones over the weekend. I prefer him with some scruff – but he does look very cute in these photos:

Michelle in Venice on September 4 & 6, 2010. Credit: WENN. Gosling on Sept. 4, 2010. Credit: Fame.

It’s long been rumored that Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling really, really enjoyed working with each other on Blue Valentine, and that sparks might have flown, etc. I have no idea whether there was any stroking, boning, spanking or hair-pulling, although just typing those words in conjunction with the words “Ryan Gosling” have made me very warm. So I can imagine that even if Michelle didn’t see Gosling as boyfriend material for whatever reason, she probably hit it, at least once. Anyway, as LaineyGossip reported a while ago, Gosling recently went to Toronto – where Michelle is filming a movie – so that they could do a photo shoot (for W Magazine) together, and they ended up spending some quality time together. I hope there was stroking involved, I really do:

Blue Valentine costars Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling’s very chummy relationship had tongues wagging at the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals earlier this year. Now the two, both 29, have set off sparks in Toronto too!

“Michelle’s there working on Take This Waltz, and Ryan flew up to for their magazine piece on Blue Valentine,” an insider says. “But he also was obviously thrilled to spend time with her.”

After the nine-hour shoot, Michelle went home to tuck daughter Matilda, 4, into bed – but she soon headed out to share an intimate dinner with Ryan at Swan restaurant says the insider.

“They couldn’t seem to get enough of each other.”

[From Star Magazine, print edition]

It sounds like they’re f-ck buddies, doesn’t it? I mean, sure, I could be “nice” and just say that they sound like good friends, and like they’ve got each other’s back and isn’t it sweet to see two actors who obviously care about each other in a lovely way. But I think there’s stroking going on, and I like it. I like Michelle, for the most part, and even though she’s a bit too fragile and flowery and vintage for my taste (I’m a hard bitch), I want the best for her. I want her to get laid, well and often. And I think Gosling is a great candidate.

Um… so I was looking for the trailer for Blue Valentine, and instead I found this clip… sweet Jesus.

Michelle and Ryan in Cannes on May 18, 2010. Credit: WENN.

First of all, Ryan Gosling, ladies and gentlemen. The Hotness. Second of all, these days I am consistently getting confused with photos of Michelle Williams and Carey Mulligan. They have identical hair now, and very similar faces and styles. When I first saw these photos, I was all “Why is Gosling all up on Carey Mulligan? Shia is going to kick his ass.” But it’s Michelle. Now… do you think they’re hitting it? There were rumors about them when they working on this movie, Blue Valentine, and I’m sure those rumors will start up again now that they’re on promotional duties. Plus, Ryan seems affectionate. If he put his hands on me like he’s putting his hands on Michelle, I would melt. Like, physically fall to the ground and melt away. Look at the way he’s… grasping her. Sigh… like he knows what he wants. Protective, sexy… yet loving too.

The synopsis for Blue Valentine: “It is a story of love found and love lost told in past and present moments in time. Flooded with romantic memories of their courtship, Dean and Cindy use one night to try and save their failing marriage. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star in this honest portrait of a relationship on the rocks.” It’s not going to be released until the end of this year! Damn it.

CB and I were just debating Ryan’s best qualities. For me, it’s his voice and, you know, how he looks. CB was almost ready to declare his band the deal breaker, but I talked her into thinking about Ryan’s band as a way to “keep him real”. After all, he doesn’t really put himself out there like a rock star. It just seems like something he does for fun. There are worst things for this fine man to do. Here’s some more Gosling loveliness:

Michelle & Ryan in Cannes on May 18, 2010. Credit: WENN.

Last night was a big screening/premiere for Martin Scorsese’s film Shutter Island, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Michelle Williams and Ben Kingsley, amongst others. The stars treated it like a premiere, and dressed up in their best cocktail attire. While I think Leonardo (above, with his director) looks great in his suit, Leo on the red carpet usually disappoints me. He’s the kind of guy who looks hotter when he’s posing for a magazine rather than in “candid” shots. Just as well, I suppose. He’s still cute.

Shutter Island is based on a Dennis Lehane novel of the same name. The story is set in the 1950s, and DiCaprio plays a marshal sent out to investigate a homicide at a facility for the criminally insane. DiCaprio talked extensively about the film in an interview in The Telegraph:

“The movie is ultimately about trauma and the dark side of humanity and it was shocking how deep and dark we had to go emotionally with this character,” he says. “When I first read the screenplay, I didn’t quite realise what we needed to put up on the screen, and it became a sort of giant emotional jigsaw puzzle with Marty and me realising we had to push it further and further for people to identify with the trauma.”

“Usually when I’m on a movie set, I’m able to detach myself from the process at the end of the day and go home and learn my lines for the next day, but this situation was a whole lot different. There were a couple of weeks when I was in a hole and it was the deepest I’ve ever gone with a character emotionally.”

“This movie is an interesting one to publicise because it’s being advertised as a Hitchcockian-type psychological thriller, but, at the end of the day, what Martin Scorsese does best is depict something about humanity and who we are as people. He focuses on the emotions of the characters. So, as much as style plays a part of this, and as much as people will be attracted to the scares and the thrills of it, it’s a story about who we are as people.”

Unlike his peers Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, he does, however, manage to maintain a semblance of a normal life, often going out unnoticed with his friend to clubs and restaurants, something he deems essential for his sanity.

“I go out and have a drink every once in a while,” he says with a grin. “Ooh, I know that’s controversial, isn’t it? I sometimes go on a vacation, too. I take what I do very seriously, and when I’m on the set that’s all I focus on, so my vice is to hang out with my friends and talk about absolutely nothing of importance whatsoever and act like a complete idiot because I’ve got to filter out a lot of the serious stuff I’m dealing with all the time. It’s like therapy to just be a complete idiot with my friends and it’s fantastic.”

He is discussing two more projects with Scorsese, one of them based on a true story about Wall Street corruption and the other a Viking adventure, although neither is by any means definite.

“These last couple of films have taken a lot out of me so I don’t know what I’m going to do next,” he says. “I have no idea and it’s kind of a cool place to be. This year is going to be the year of really taking care of myself because I’ve reached 35 and I’ve taken a lot of things seriously, maybe too seriously at times, so I’m going to make sure that whatever I do next and whatever choices I make are really right for me. And we’ll see where that takes me.”

[From The Telegraph]

Michelle Williams was there too, wearing a stunning one-shoulder cream dress. I love her styling too – good hair, great makeup, and she looks like she’s gained a little weight back after looking a little too thin several months ago. Michelle is rumored to be dating Ryan Gosling these days, but unfortunately, he didn’t show up last night:

Mick Jagger was there too, with his girlfriend L’Wren Scott. I love that Mick adores really tall women. He must be a leg man.

Ben Kingsley is seriously one of my favorite actors! Give some love to Krishna (his real name, by the way)!

Mark Ruffalo and his wife (girlfriend?) Sunrise. I love Mark too. He’s lovely.

And last and definitely least, we have AnnaLynne McCord trying to pull focus in a gross peek-a-boo catsuit. Get a job, honey.

‘Shutter Island’ premiere pics from February 17, 2010. Credit: Andres Otero/ WENN.

Michelle Williams is the cover girl for the October issue of Vogue. The piece is called “Triumph After Tragedy” with Michelle‘s big quote “I feel hopeful and grateful” on the cover. As far as the cover shot and the rest of the images – all done by the brilliant Mario Testino – I’m not loving it. In my opinion, Michelle looks so much prettier with long hair, and I can’t help but think this short crop, plus the sort-of retro styling, gives Michelle a very “Mia Farrow circa Rosmary’s Baby” vibe. If that’s your thing, God bless. But I could think of much better looks for Michelle.

The full interview is at Vogue’s style site, but Us Weekly pulled the most interesting quotes. I tend to think Michelle is probably a very eccentric, quiet, almost fragile woman, but she surprised me in the interview. She opened about Heath Ledger and his death, and why she hasn’t talked to the press very much since his death.

More than a year after his tragic death, Michelle Williams opens up about losing Heath Ledger.

“I didn’t know what my boundaries were for a long time, which made interviews feel very unsafe,” Williams, 29, says in Vogue’s October issue (on newsstands now) about her former boyfriend, who died of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 28 in January 2008.

She adds: “I can talk about grief because that’s mine, about single parenting, about trying to balance work and kids. But what I don’t have to talk about is what happened between Heath and me in our relationship.”

She and Ledger — who met while filming Brokeback Mountain — dated for three years before they amicably split in August 2007. The duo had a daughter, Matilda Rose, 3.

“Brokeback Mountain was an unrepeatable moment in time, a very charmed time in my life,” she tells Vogue. “I was in love. I was in a movie I was proud to be a part of, and with a beautiful brand-new baby. Everything was good in that moment.”

When he died, she struggled to cope.

“I was holding it together by a string and a paper clip in the fall and winter,” she says. “I didn’t know if I could keep it all together… You console yourself by saying it’s all a deepening process. But it’s wired. After the first year, the pain is less intense — it’s less immediate. But the magical thinking goes away too. And that’s a whole new reckoning.”

Still, their child provided her strength.

“Every time I really miss him and wonder where he’s gone, I just look at her,” she says.

On her relationship with Matilda, Michelle says, “I’m falling more and more in love with her and I think she deserves the bulk of my attention. We’re lucky. I can work. She can go to a good school. There’s a lot there for her. And she can know her dad in so many ways, and so many of his friends who will be able to tell her so many stories. His friends, his family—they were a big part of his life, and they will be a big part of her life.”

Of the future, she says: “I feel hopeful and grateful. For a while I thought we had lost everything. It makes you want to love better and live better.”

[From Us Weekly]

The author of the piece, Sally Singer, claims that Michelle’s grief was twofold: “There was death, but before that there was the loss of her partner and the dream of an intact family, a loss that Williams, it’s pretty clear, did not want.” Fascinating. Because in Vanity Fair’s August cover story about Heath, his friends made the year before his death (the year in which he and Michelle were separated and perhaps very estranged) sound very, very different.

Michelle also confirmed to Vogue that she is no longer dating director (and ex-husband of Sofia Coppola) Spike Jonze, who she was with for about a year. Michelle says about her brief romance with Jonze: “The timing was impossible. I thought falling in love again was the only thing that was going to save me from the pain. This erroneous idea: It just makes things more complicated.” Michelle admits that “obviously [I] don’t know how to” date as a single parent. That’s sad. I thought she and Spike were still together. Who would Michelle be good with? I’m thinking Ryan Gosling… or maybe someone a bit older and wiser, like… maybe Edward Norton? Hey, they would be really cute together!

Header via CoverAwards. Other images from Style.com

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.