Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams was nominated for an Oscar for her supporting role as Alma in the 2005 movie Brokeback Mountain (starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal). When Williams was a teenager she began getting small TV roles, and when she was 15 she appeared in the feature film Species (1995). She legally separated from her parents before she was 18 to pursue a career in acting, and it paid off. In 1998 she began the first of six seasons on the hit TV show Dawson's Creek as Jen Lindley. The show made her a star, alongside fellow Creeksters James Van Der Beek and Katie Holmes. While working on the series she began a film career that has included the horror film Halloween H20 (1998) and the political comedy Dick (1999, opposite Kirsten Dunst). Williams and Ledger became a couple during the filming of the movie, and their daughter Matilda Rose was born in October of 2005. They separated in 2007, and Ledger died in 2008.

Extra credit: Willams is unrelated to Michelle Williams, the pop singer from the group Destiny's Child... Williams's father, Larry Williams, is a successful stock trader; in 1997 Williams herself won a stock-trading competition.