Michelle Williams is happy to let her daughter Matilda go wild. “She is just into animals,” Williams (who rarely opens up about her only child) told Us Weekly and other reporters at the Manchester by the Sea premiere in Beverly Hills November 14. “Real ones and stuffed ones, saving them and sleeping with them.”
Luckily, the 11-year-old doesn’t even have to leave the house to see her favorite animals in action. “We have a zoo in our apartment,” Williams, 36, joked of their home in Brooklyn, New York. “We just added a cat to our dog and fish. I figure that’s like a small petting zoo.”
While the Dawson’s Creek alum brings animals home for her daughter, whose father Heath Ledger passed away in 2008, Williams joked that Matilda’s passion may have a bonus for her as well. “I could get at least get 50 cents a visit,” she said. “I think that I could sell it to the 5-and-under crowd. Maybe if I, like, dressed up the cat and shaved the dog and sold them as some sort of novelty animals.”
It seems Matilda is not alone in her animal adoration. When talking about the “really special” drama Manchester by the Sea, which also stars Casey Affleck, Kyle Chandler and Matthew Broderick, and has garnered ecstatic reviews, Williams raved to reporters, "Wait until you see [Affleck],” adding: “The seagulls in the movie are very good too.”
Although Williams spoke excitedly of her daughter’s hobby, she noted that her favorite part of being a parent to Matilda is, “just hearing that word: Mama."