Surprise! Michelle Williams is married to singer-songwriter Phil Elverum. The super-private actress managed to keep their relationship secret, and the same went for their wedding, too. But in an interview with Vanity Fair, Williams finally spilled the beans about her new husband. Here's what you need to know about her musician hubby.
1. He performs under the name Mount Eerie.
The 40-year-old indie musician previously recorded under the name the Microphones, but now uses the name Mount Eerie. According to GQ, in addition to writing his own songs and playing his own instruments, Elverum also masters his records, designs their jackets, and does his own publicity.
Pitchfork named his 2001 album, The Glow, Pt. 2, as the best album of the year. His lyrics often focus on the Pacific Northwest, which he called home until recently, but more recently tackled grief and death after the passing of his late wife, according to the music site.
One song, called "Real Death," featured lyrics like: "I go downstairs and outside and you still get mail / A week after you died a package with your name on it came / And inside was a gift for our daughter you had ordered in secret / And collapsed there on the front steps I wailed."
2. He also lost a spouse.
In 2006, Michelle Williams lost her partner, Heath Ledger, to an accidental drug overdose. Their daughter, Matilda, was only 2 years old at the time. Elverum also tragically lost a partner in the past, when he was the parent of a young daughter.
Elverum married Geneviève Castrée, an illustrator and musician from Quebec, in 2003. In 2015, she was diagnosed with inoperable stage 4 pancreatic cancer, when their daughter was just four months old. They started a GoFundMe page to help with medical costs. Castrée died in July 2016, and Elverum wrote the album A Crow Looked at Me from her room, The New Yorker reported.
“She died at home with me and her parents holding her, hopefully having reached some last minute peace. It’s all very sad and surreal," Elverum wrote when he announced his wife's death. "So much is left unfinished for her. She was a firehose of brilliant ideas that never turned off. We loved her and everything is weird now.”
Elverum recently tweeted that he deleted his Facebook account in her honor, because she hated it.
3. He has a daughter, too.
When Castrée died, their daughter, Agathe, was just 18 months old, a similar age to Williams' daughter, Matilda, when she lost her father. Vanity Fair reported the two moved from Anacortes, Washington, this July to live with Williams and Matilda in Brooklyn.
4. Their wedding was incredibly secretive.
Vanity Fair reported the Elverum and Williams were "married in a secret ceremony in the Adirondacks, witnessed by only a handful of friends and their two daughters."
5. He's spent time with Michelle Williams' best friend.
The only hint he was dating Williams came from Busy Phillips' Instagram. He posed with Phillips and her family at the March for Our Lives in Los Angeles.
