Michelle Williams on screen and stage
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American actress Michelle Williams' first screen appearance was at age thirteen in a 1993 episode of the television series Baywatch, and she made her film debut as the love interest of a teenage boy in Lassie (1994).[1][2] She had guest roles in the sitcoms Step by Step and Home Improvement, and played the younger version of Natasha Henstridge's character in the science fiction film Species (1995).[3][4] Greater success came to Williams when played the sexually troubled teenager Jen Lindley in the teen drama series Dawson's Creek (1998–2003).[1][3] In 1999, she made her stage debut with the Tracy Letts-written play Killer Joe.[1]
In the 2000s, Williams eschewed parts in big-budget films in favor of roles with darker themes in independent productions such as Me Without You (2001) and The Station Agent (2003).[5][6] Despite positive reviews, these films were not widely seen.[7][8] This changed in 2005 when Williams played the neglected wife of Heath Ledger's character in Brokeback Mountain, a drama about star-crossed gay lovers, which became a critical and commercial success; Williams gained a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.[9][10][11] Her career did not progress much in the next few years, but Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008), in which she starred as a drifter searching for her missing dog, was critically acclaimed.[7][8][12] Martin Scorsese's thriller Shutter Island (2010), starring Leonardo DiCaprio, in which Williams had a supporting part, became her most widely seen film to that point.[8][11]
Williams received two consecutive Oscar nominations for Best Actress for starring as an unhappily married woman in Blue Valentine (2010) and Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn (2011); she also won a Golden Globe Award for the latter.[13][14][15] She next played Glinda in the commercially successful fantasy feature Oz the Great and Powerful (2013).[16][17] On Broadway, she played Sally Bowles in a revival of the musical Cabaret in 2014, and a sexual abuse survivor in a revival of the play Blackbird in 2016.[18] For the latter, she gained a Tony Award for Best Actress nomination.[19] She earned another Academy Award nomination for playing a grieving mother in Manchester by the Sea (2016).[20] The 2017 musical The Greatest Showman and the 2018 superhero film Venom emerged as two of her highest-grossing releases.[8][21] She returned to television in 2019 to portray Gwen Verdon opposite Sam Rockwell's Bob Fosse in the FX miniseries Fosse/Verdon, winning a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Actress.[22][23] Williams received her fifth Oscar nomination for starring as a troubled mother in Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical drama The Fabelmans (2022).[24]