Before the Michelle Williams-Mark Wahlberg/par-disparity story took hold last week, I was going to cover something a lot nicer about Michelle. She has a “new” boyfriend, although I think she’s been dating this guy, undercover, for months now. His name is Andrew Youmans, and People Magazine did a lengthy story about him. He’s not shady in the least – he’s a financial consultant, he’s not connected to Hollywood or Broadway, he’s 50 years old (Michelle is 37), and he just sounds really smart and really solid. Michelle has apparently been wearing a heart-shaped diamond ring on her left hand and now people think she’s engaged.
Michelle Williams said “yes”! The actress has been quietly dating New York financier Andrew Youmans, and though they’ve yet to make an official public appearance together, it’s the real deal. In fact, multiple sources reveal in the new issue of Us Weekly that the pair are engaged!
“She wants a good guy and a stable family life,” says the insider.
The All the Money in the World star set off engagement speculation when she showed up at the Golden Globes on January 7 with a heart-shaped diamond ring on that finger. At the time, she brushed off the accessory as simply “beautiful jewelry.” Williams, 37, also sported the ring while wearing a red one-piece and floppy straw hat at the beach in the Bahamas, where she spent New Year’s Day with Youmans and Matilda, her 12-year-old daughter with the late Heath Ledger.
When Ledger died at age 28 a few weeks after he and Williams broke up, Matilda was just 2. Following the tragedy, friends say the Brooklyn-based actress was hesitant to date again.
“Michelle was totally focused on giving Matilda the best upbringing possible,” says pal. Besides, says another, “It took her a long time to get over Heath.”
I always dislike how magazines paint Michelle as the forever-untouched widow of Heath Ledger. She was devastated in the wake of Ledger’s death and I believe it’s taken her years to find her footing. But also: she’s 37 years old, and she’s had plenty of serious relationships and casual relationships since Ledger passed away. I’m not shading her for that – good for her for still believing in love and for dating and enjoying herself. I am throwing shade at the idea that we need to treat her with kid gloves, like she’ll burst into tears if she even thinks of another man besides Heath. Anyway, I hope she is engaged to this guy. He sounds really solid and I like it when actresses date accomplished men outside of the industry.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Michelle’s dress looks like something Rosemary Woodhouse would wear.
Here for the Rosemary’s Baby shade.
She defaults to that look a lot.
Omggg, that heart-shaped diamond ring would be the corniest engagement ring EVER.
More appropriate as a Confirmation present or a gift from the tooth fairy.
While the description does make it sound a little corny, looking at the photo it’s actually quite beautiful. You can barely tell it’s even heart-shaped. She seems happy so I hope this works out for her. It’s nice that she’s found a “normal” guy who’s not in show business, since privacy and being low-key are things that she cherishes.
I agree with all that. Just dislike heart-shaped stones.
Good for her!
I’m her age and I would totally date a hot 50 year old!
I hope she has more children if she so wishes.
She minds her business and is all about the work! So happy for her!
50 is too old for me personally but I’m happy she found love outside of toxic Hollywood.
So Brad Pitt, Daniel Craig and Will Smith would be too old?
Gurl
Im 37 as well and 50 is a BIT too old for me but I am happy that she found someone and that he’s just a regular guy.
She’s an Olsen twin?!
The thing that always bugged me about the “Heath Ledger’s widow” thing is that they were engaged but never married, and had already split at the time of his death. I know it’s devestating to lose an ex you were still close to, but by all accounts they’d had an amicable split and had both started moving on. The whole thing just felt like her PR people used him as a way to make her more sympathetic and relatable, which was unfair to both of them, and something she didn’t really need anyway.
I agree. I roll my eyes each time Heath’s name is brought up in every single story about her boyfriends, like all of them were such a painful first steps of a frqgile widow towards new love. But I also think that despite being broken up the time, in a way they are connected in a special way though their child. It causes me terror thinking about that possibility of loosing the father of my child and having to raise a child alone, especially then the child is of age to remeber tthe father having to process the loss somehow too.
+1 They had split, let’s not turn her into the tragic widow
It also worked in Heath’s favor, too. The emphasis on his role as father and (sometime) partner made his death read more tragically than if he’d been “just another Hollywood druggie.”
No one really knew if they were married or not – they referred to each other as husband and wife.
The split was what, less than 6 months before his death? and she’s mentioned since that she’d hoped they could get back together.
She’s also mentioned hoping (in the years since) to give Matilda a brother or sister/not planning for her to be an only child (presumably hoping one of her post-Heath relationships would work out), it’s obvious she took his death really hard but she doesn’t deserve to be criticised for saying so.
Preach!
Plus she’s dated a ton of guys since then so its not as if she didn’t move on already.
I’m surprised she announced it now its going to be 10 years on Saturday since his death.
That’s nice news for her if it’s true.
I always remember that she was dating others before Heath’s death, during the months after they broke up, and after all, why not, she was single. And some friend of hers remarked in press at the time of the break-up that she was not upset, she was much more about business and career, a focused steel spine sort of woman who was fine and moving on — and so in a way, I have side-eyed the delicate widow media PR role.
A friend who is a Ledger fan always points this stuff out during every film PR blitz, lol, saying that MW had their daughter with her that Christmas overseas and he went to see his family instead of going to see MW and daughter, so who knows what the dynamics were. I am sure she was upset by his death, but…. My fan friend dubbed her the Smug Ice Zombie, always saying she looks “fifty degrees too pleased by her story line.” So now I can’t unsee that.
Your friend probably read that awful Peter Biskind article in Vanity Fair years ago about Ledger’s last months. Honestly, I couldn’t believe they published it. It was so nasty and sexist. They let Terry Gilliam rant like the misogynist he is. And Biskind of course wrote the book about Miramax that conveniently left out Harvey’s abuse, even though he’d heard plenty of stories.
By most accounts she’s very nice, and she keeps their daughter well clear of the spotlight.
I am sure she is probably very nice and raising their daughter well. I still side eye the PR spin. You can be nice, and still spin things in business for business. Happens every day. A woman can spin things just like a man can, you know.
As I recall it, my friend said People had some piece on it and she felt that if syrupy People laid it out that way, she would tend to believe it. I am not a People reader so I couldn’t confirm this w/o digging around online.
MSD is right. That interview was AWFUL. Ledger was mad that Michelle wouldn’t put her small child on a trans-Atlantic flight from Sweden, not to mention how hard he was partying at the time. He could have come out to see her himself had he wanted.
I can’t fault Michelle for looking “smug” on the red carpet. She clearly has a “game face”. She’s had it ever since she and Ledger broke up – look at the difference in her demeanor. So I don’t blame her there.
YouTube her old howard stern interview from the 90s. Life changes people.
I wish her well. She just seems like a good, smart, nice person. It’s not her fault that the silly media portrays her as a long suffering widow. She seems to really value her privacy after the tabloid turmoil she went through so a guy who isn’t connected to the movie business is probably a good idea.
I like her too but it sort of is her fault. During her heavy Blue Valentine campaign it was all Matilda and I are hanging in there, breathy little girl lost interviews and photo shoots where she was quite literally standing in the woods sporting her new Mia Farrow pixie cut, wearing toddler dresses with Peter Pan collars and looking abandoned like a doll. Creepy af and it really annoyed some people at the time.
@ Enough Already, I cackled into my tea reading your description of MW looking like a creepy abandoned doll in the woods.
It started even before that. She’s talked about all of it – except their actual relationship and that’s perfectly fair – a lot. And she did push that widow narrative. And that’s fine, too. But she has never made any attempt to counter the media narrative and that’s a fact.
I don’t mind, it’s her life but it means that people will forever associate her with that part of her life. Because she’s made it part of her public persona.
Sometimes I wonder if her leaning in to it is her trade off for not discussing her current personal life. And if we’re to be completely honest, she seems like a perfectly nice lady but this is the most interesting part of her public persona. She doesn’t have much else to get headlines – the drawback of being low key.
The commenters on this site were absolutely brutal to Michelle about Heath’s death. Brutal. Let’s not forget she was the mother of his child and became the lone mother when Heath died. We have no idea what her feelings about him were when he died. It’s horrible to tell someone that they basically shouldn’t care if the father of their kid dies.
Apparently they still are. Yikes.
I don’t get it, either. I understand a celebrity not being someone’s favorite, but to diminish their pain by making it some sort of PR strategy just seems cruel. If memory serves they were taking a time out with hopes of a reconciliation later on down the road that, obviously, never came to be. He was her child’s father (who he loved & adored more than anything), and they weren’t broken up for that long before he died. Of course she was hurt & devastated. And she only spoke about it/him when asked (yes, she could choose not answer, but maybe it helped in some small way to talk openly about it). I can’t help but have a soft spot for her.
Just to clarify my statement from above, I don’t blame her in any way for the PR spin around Heath’s death. I feel like she’s a private person who dealt with it outside the public eye as much as possible. I do, however, feel like her PR team exploited the situation. It just seems like the type of thing that PR people would do without bothering to inform their clients about until afterward.
“We’ve gotta strike while the iron’s hot, trust us, this is what we do” type of thing.
I was gonna say….nothing’s really changed.
I also don’t get it.
I completely agree. The lack of empathy is astounding, particularly since the breakup was surely tied to his substance abuse issues. Very glad to hear that she’s found a solid guy outside of H’wood.
I wasn’t around here back then but some of the ‘widow Ledger’ comments are absolutely brutal and really unfair.
We don’t say shit like that about Keanu (lost his ex-gf and mother of his child in a car accident in the early 00s) even when he still talks about never having children etc, it’s not cool to do it to Michelle either. I get that people have their own opinions on her ‘PR spin’ but this is mine, and she’s never done or said anything wrong.
Keanu rarely discusses his personal life in fact I rarely hear about him at all.
Plus his GF isn’t famous so that also works in his favor.
Heath Ledger was a leading man in Hollywood who could’ve been even bigger had he not passed.
Its no worse than some of the other stuff said around here about other celebs people like to trash around these parts.
Judging from the comments on this thread they still are
Congratulations to them if true!
(Also, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them, but my cynical side finds it interesting how these types of stories tend to pop up during awards season.)
To be fair, MW is a very private person and is left alone by the press for the most part. But once you have to promote a movie or awards, the press starts getting nosey and checking into your private life again. With each interview questions become less about your acting and more about your life.
He looks like Dean McDermott with a slightly stronger jawline. I can’t unsee it. I wouldn’t.