Of course the Elle magazine profile of Michelle Williams is all heavy-duty with Heath Ledger references and inferences now, but if you get past that you get a fascinating, beautifully-written profile of a woman who sounds awfully interesting to me, and frankly familiar in many ways (the beauty, the celebrity, not so much). A few lines that resonate:

Her smiles come easily but are complicated, never carefree. “I’m always aware of the whole,” Williams says. “I have that feeling inside, when something really tickles or delights me – it’s not singular. I recognize all the awful things in the world, and in spite of them, I can still laugh.” This hyperawareness has come at a price. “For so long, I felt like a walking open wound everywhere I went,” she says. “There’s this Joan Didion quote about being afflicted form an early age with a presentiment of loss. Did I come into the world like that?” (see Didion quote below)

Like extrasensory perception, you either have it or you don’t. It’s a poignant, painful, and appealing quality that cannot be acted.

“The distraction of work is utterly invaluable. When I have too much free time, that’s when things start to get a little messy.” Tears pool in her eyes. She smiles one of those smiles.

“I was in and out of the bathtub my entire labor – 24 hours. I don’t remember the pain, or the sensation. But I do remember quietly talking to myself and saying, ‘Okay, you don’t have to tell anybody what you’re thinking right now. You don’t have to tell Heath, you don’t have to tell the nurse, you don’t have to tell the doctor: you are never, ever doing this again. It can be a secret just for us.” She laughs. “I was trying to tell myself, ‘Remember what I’m saying now: this pain is too great to bear. You won’t do this again.’ And here I am today and the next one I’ll do at home! You totally forget. It’s nature’s trick.”

Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”

“Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. “