Michelle Williams' daughter Matilda Ledger has learned some great lessons about self-empowerment from her mum. This Mother's Day, the 11-year-old, who lost her father, Heath Ledger, when she was only two, gave her mum the greatest card ever.
"For Mother's Day this year, my daughter gave me a card that said, 'Mum, thanks for letting me be me,' Williams said at a Cannes press conference for her new film, Wonderstruck. The card pictured "somebody in high heels on a skateboard."
Williams said this was the "ultimate" token of appreciation, because she just wants kids to be themselves, whether she's parenting them or working with them. "To me, the greatest gift of working with children and knowing children is listening to children," she said. "And [understanding] who they are—not your idea of a perfect child, or who you want them to be—but who they really are."
In Wonderstruck, Williams plays Elaine, single mum to 12-year-old Ben (Oakes Fegley), who is deaf. She said Elaine's encouraging, nurturing style was a lot like her own. "I think when you become a mother, it's sort of difficult to separate yourself from being a mother. Being a mother is not just who I am in my relationship with my daughter, but it's informed the kind of work that I want to make, the relationships that I want to have, the person that I want to be for her. So there's really no area of my life that's untouched. It's really at the center of everything I do."
