Michelle Williams: Heath & # 39; loved me before anyone thought I was pretty & # 39;

Michelle Williams always strives to know that her 12-year-old daughter Matilda Rose knows what a great man Heath Ledger was before his untimely demise.

The actress, 37, opens about motherhood and holds Ledger's memory in a new interview for Vanity Fair – in which she also unveils the recently secretly married musician Phil Elverum.

"I always say to Matilda," Your dad loved me before anyone thought I was talented or pretty, or had nice clothes, "Williams revealed.

Ledger died in New York City in 2008, after he lost one Matilda was only 2 years old.

The actor and Williams had met three years after the meeting on the set of their 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain but had split up five months earlier. [1

9659002] "When you" A single parent, and this element of provider and protection is missing, it's scary, "said Williams, after Ledger's death to raise her daughter.

Want the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to see this and more in the PEOPLE Babies Newsletter .

One's mother is very proud of being able to provide Matilda with a stable environment when she grows up.

She did not disturb her routine and did not miss the class, "Williams said, adding that the summers" slowed down "time with her daughter [196592002]" [I’m] less planned, less regulated, less hectic "I'd rather go," she explained.

"I parents, to release Matilda, to be herself, and finally, I am loved by someone who makes me feel free," Williams said of the new husband Elverum, who also had an illness, tragic loss.

RELATED: Inside Michelle Williams's love life since Heath Ledger: From Jason Segel to her new husband

The The daughter of indie singer Agathe was barely one and a half years old when his wife Genevi ève Castrée died in July 2015 in her hometown of Anacortes, Washington after a stage IV pancreatic cancer disease. She was diagnosed when Agathe was just 4 months old old was.

"She died at home with me and her parents holding on to her and hopefully finding peace at the last minute," Elverum wrote on a GoFundMe page set up at that time Pitchfork .

Williams and Elverum married a couple of friends and their daughters in a secret ceremony in the Adirondacks.

"Obviously, I've never talked of a relationship in my life," she told Vanity Fair . "But Phil is no one else, and that's worth something." Ultimately, the way he loves me is the way I want to live my life as a whole. "I work to be free at this moment. to give Matilda the freedom to be herself, and I am ultimately loved by someone who makes me feel free. "