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 As for opening up about her life after keeping it private for so long, Williams said she hopes it helps other people going through tragedy. By the time you read this, she and her partner, singer-songwriter Phil Elverum, whom she met through a mutual friend, will have been married in a secret ceremony in the Adirondacks, witnessed by only a handful of friends and their two daughters. His late wife, illustrator and musician Geneviève Castrée, was diagnosed with inoperable stage-4 pancreatic cancer in 2015, four months after the birth of their daughter, and the two very private artists went public with a GoFundMe page to help defray medical costs. Williams calls her relationship with Elverum “very sacred and very special.” In July, he packed up his home in Anacortes, Washington, and drove across the country to live with her and their daughters in Brooklyn. to Escape ‘Scary’ Times After Heath Ledger’s Death 
 
 Michelle Williams and Phil Elverum Steve Granitz/WireImage; Jordi Vidal/Redferns via Getty 
 
 “I never gave up on love. “I always say to Matilda, ‘Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes.’ ” I can hear her voice crack. “Obviously I’ve never once in my life talked about a relationship,” she says, “but Phil isn’t anyone else. And that’s worth something. Ultimately the way he loves me is the way I want to live my life on the whole. I work to be free inside of the moment. I parent to let Matilda feel free to be herself, and I am finally loved by someone who makes me feel free.” 
 
 Williams decided to open up about her relationship, as she did about her income, on the chance that other women might find hope or instruction in her story. Collier Schorr 
 
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 “I don’t really want to talk about any of it,” she said. “But there’s that tease, that lure, that’s like, ‘What if this helps somebody? What if somebody who has always journeyed in this way, who has struggled as much as I struggled, and looked as much as I looked, finds something that helps them?” In the end, she says, what she’s learned is simple: “Don’t settle. Don’t settle for something that feels like a prison, or is hard, or hurts you,” she says. “If it doesn’t feel like love, it’s not love.” 
 
 Back at dinner, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a small gray notebook, in which she has scribbled some thoughts about our previous interview.
– Michelle Williams has, very quietly, gotten married. The actress revealed her plans to Vanity Fair, and in her profile on Williams, Amanda Fortini wrote that by the time the piece was published, Williams and indie musician Phil Elverum would have been wed in the Adirondacks in a ceremony attended by their two daughters and just a few friends. "I never gave up on love," Williams tells Fortini. After the 2008 death of Heath Ledger, with whom she had daughter Matilda in 2005, she says she used to tell Matilda, "Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes." She says she was looking for that same type of "radical acceptance" from someone else, and now she's found it: "I am finally loved by someone who makes me feel free." Elverum, a 40-year-old singer-songwriter who records and performs under the name Mount Eerie, lost his wife to cancer in July 2016, when their daughter was just 18 months old. This month, he and the now-3-year-old moved from Washington state to Brooklyn to live with Williams, 37, and Matilda, 12. Williams calls their relationship, which People notes was not public until the Vanity Fair interview, "very sacred and very special." She struggled with whether to discuss it with Fortini, but ultimately decided, "There’s that tease, that lure, that’s like, What if this helps somebody? What if somebody who has always journeyed in this way, who has struggled as much as I struggled, and looked as much as I looked, finds something that helps them?" To those people, she says: "Don't settle. ... If it doesn't feel like love, it's not love." Click for the full profile, which delves into more than her personal life.