Michelle Williams (actress)
Michelle Ingrid Williams (born September 9, 1980) is an American actress best known as Jen Lindley on Dawson's Creek.
Born in Kalispell, Montana, USA, she is the eldest of the five children of Larry, a commodities broker, and Carla Williams, a homemaker. When she was nine, her family moved to San Diego, California. Her mother took her to auditions in Los Angeles where she won her first film role, as a space alien who turned into Natasha Henstridge in the 1995 movie Species. She graduated from high school at fifteen and was emancipated from her parents so she could pursue an acting career. She won several small roles before she was cast as Jen Lindley on Dawson's Creek, the part that would make her a star.
On Dawson's Creek, her character, only fifteen, had been too much for her parents to handle, drinking, partying, having sex from age twelve, so she was exiled from her home in New York City, to live in Capeside, Massachusetts with her maternal grandmother. Jen was everything her grandmother was not: jaded, cynical, irreligious, and more, leading to frequent arguments and her eventually being kicked out of the house. The show would run for six seasons, from 1998 to 2003.
Her first starring role in films was as Arlene in Dick (1999), a satire in which she starred with Kirsten Dunst on Richard M. Nixon.
She has been in a half-dozen subsequent films, some of them well-reviewed (e.g. The Station Agent, Me Without You), but none have been great commercial successes.
She is engaged to actor Heath Ledger, with whom she is expecting her first child. She met Ledger on the set of Brokeback Mountain.
Partial Filmography
- The Baxter (2005)
- Brokeback Mountain (2005)
- Imaginary Heroes (2004)
- The Station Agent (2003)
- The United States of Leland (2003)
- Prozac Nation (2001)
- Me Without You (film) (2001)
- If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000) (TV)
- But I'm a Cheerleader (1999)
- Dick (1999)
- Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
- Dawson's Creek (1998) (TV series)
- A Thousand Acres (1997)
- Killing Mr. Griffin (1997) (TV)
- Species (1995)
- Lassie (1994)