Michelle Williams and her husband, indie musician Phil Elverum, reportedly split after less than a year of marriage.
The couple quietly married last summer and moved in together. However, the Venom actress was recently seen without her wedding ring in two separate public outings, reports PEOPLE.
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“Michelle and Phil separated at the beginning of the year. It was an amicable spilt and they remain friends,” a source close to the couple told PEOPLE Friday.
Williams, who is famous for keeping her private life out of the public eye, did not publicly discuss their romance until she revealed she was married in a July 2018 interview with Vanity Fair.
The four-time Oscar-nominee, 38, has a 12-year-old daughter, Matilda, from her relationship with the late Heath Ledger. Elverum, 40, has a 3-year-old daughter, Agathe, from his first marriage.
According to Vanity Fair, the two met through mutual friends and connected through their personal losses. Elverum also lost his first wife, Genevieve Castree, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2016, 18 months after their daughter was born.
Williams called her relationship with Elverum “very sacred and very special,” noting that she “never gave up on love” after Ledger died in 2009.
“Obviously I’ve never once in my life talked about a relationship, but Phil isn’t anyone else,” Williams told Vanity Fair at the time. “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.”
Williams also explained why her marriage was the one part of her off-screen life she was willing to talk about publicly.
“I don’t really want to talk about any of it,” she explained. “But there’s that tease, that lure, that’s like, ‘What if this helps somebody? What if somebody who has always journeyed in this way, who has struggled as much as I struggled, and looked as much as I looked, finds something that helps them?’”
When the wedding was first reported, it came as a shock. In January 2018, Williams reportedly got engaged to New York financier Andrew Youmans. She was also linked to director Spike Jonze, actor Jason Segel and author Jonathan Safran Foer in the past.
Williams earned Oscar nominations for her roles in Brokeback Mountain, Blue Valentine, My Week with Marilyn and Manchester by the Sea.
She can now be seen opposite Sam Rockwell as the dancer Gwen Verdon in Fosse/Verdon. The series airs on FX Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET.
Photo credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images
