Powerful interview with Michelle Williams in Vanity Fair…I never thought I’d like her (although she’s a fine actor), but now am changing my mind:

“I never gave up on love,” she later tells me, saying that she has spent the 10 years since Ledger’s death looking for the kind of “radical acceptance” she felt from him. “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. She sometimes can’t believe that she’s found this kind of love, at last. “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.”

It’s not that at all am partial to the “never-give-up-on-love” cliche. Am not. Am now inclined to proceed my life without using this massively ballooned word ever. It’d be curious to see what people would be saying to each others and doing to each others if the word “love” is culturally banned.

But am very much taken by her phrasing on struggle to be free.