Michelle Williams says imagining herself with Heath Ledger is among her ‘favorite places to visit’

Michelle Williams is understandably guarded when it comes to talking about the late Heath Ledger, with whom she had a daughter, Matilda, who is now 6.

The My Week With Marilyn actress met the Australian actor in 2004 on the set of Brokeback Mountain. Within a year, she was expecting the couple’s first child, daughter Matilda. In a new interview with GQ Magazine she reveals the attraction was instant.

"Our initial meeting, the circumstances of how we first met, were cosmic or something," Williams, 31, told the magazine. "Yeah, a lot of things happened at once. It's a bit like: We had a lot of things to do, because we didn't have a lot of time, or something."

Williams and Ledger split in 2007. Ledger died of a prescription drug overdose in January 2008.

The Golden Globe winner says afterwards, she felt the media was intruding on her life. The attention made her rethink acting. At the time, she had been taking on two movie projects that she admits she doesn’t completely remember.

"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 said of dealing with the death of Ledger and the media attention that followed. “And it's not just me—there's somebody else who I'm trying to protect, and I can't. I can't make it stop, I can't make it go away. Trying to find ways to explain it or shield her from it. It's like you're trying to go about your life, and make dinner...but the roof is off of your house, and the walls are falling down."

Williams, who didn’t attach herself to a project until Blue Valentine, says although they had split, at the time of Ledger’s death, she had hopes they’d reconcile.
In an interview in 2010, Williams had said it was hard to believe he was gone.

"In a strange way, I miss that year, because all those possibilities that existed then are gone," she had said. "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."

When Williams was asked in GQ if she ever imagined their possible future together, she got choked up.

" It would make me too sad to answer, but it's also one of my favorite things to imagine," she said. "It’s actually one of my favorite places to visit."