Michelle Ingrid Williams (born September 9, 1980) is an Academy Award-nominated American actress. Williams broke into stardom on the teen series Dawson`s Creek and later graduated to full-length features, such as Brokeback Mountain, for which she earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Williams, the eldest of five children, was born in Kalispell, Montana, the daughter of Carla, a homemaker, and Larry Williams, a well-known stock and commodities trader currently living in Australia.

When Williams was nine, her family moved to San Diego, California, and, at an early age, she became interested in acting. At age fifteen, faced with her parents` disapproval, she emancipated herself from them and, after completing the ninth grade at the Upper School of Santa Fe Christian Schools, in Solana Beach, California, she left school in order to pursue her acting career in Dawson`s Creek.

Williams` father taught her about financial investment trading. In 1997, at age sixteen, she won the Robbins World Cup Trading Championship, as he had done ten years earlier. She turned $10,000 into $110,000 over the course of a year and that gain (as of 2006) is the fourth highest in the history of that competition (her father`s being the highest).

Williams` career began in television, appearing in programs such as the 90`s version of Lassie, Baywatch and Home Improvement. Williams` first film role was in the motion picture Species. Soon after, she won additional roles, including the Jessica Lange-Michelle Pfeiffer film A Thousand Acres and the 1998 movie Halloween: H20. Williams` star profile rose considerably when in 1998 she was cast as one of the lead characters on the WB show Dawson`s Creek. She would play Jen Lindley for all six seasons of the successful show.

During and after Dawson`s Creek`s run, Williams made strong turns in several notable indie films. Her first starring role was as Arlene in the film Dick, a satire of the Watergate scandal, opposite Kirsten Dunst. She starred opposite Christina Ricci in Prozac Nation, and also appeared in the HBO film If These Walls Could Talk 2, and several acclaimed indie pictures such as The United States of Leland, Me Without You and Imaginary Heroes with Sigourney Weaver. For her performance in The Station Agent, Williams along with the rest of the cast received a Screen Actors Guild award nomination for Best Acting Ensemble. In 2005 critics and audiences took note of Williams` performance in Ang Lee`s Brokeback Mountain. For her performance, she won a Critic`s Choice Award and received Golden Globe, BAFTA and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

Since then, Williams has been cast in several highly anticipated films. In 2006 she appeared in The Hawk Is Dying, with Paul Giamatti; and in 2007, in The Hottest State, opposite Ethan Hawke, and in I`m Not There, directed by Todd Haynes, which also features Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Julianne Moore, among others.

Williams was engaged to Australian actor Heath Ledger and gave birth to their daughter, Matilda Rose Ledger, on October 28, 2005 in New York City. Matilda`s godfather is Jake Gyllenhaal while her godmother is Busy Philipps, Michelle`s co-star on Dawson`s Creek. The couple met on the set of the film Brokeback Mountain, in which they played husband and wife. During their time together they lived in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, New York. On September 2007, Williams and Led

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