Fresh Air Remembers War Reporter Anthony Shadid.

February 17, 2012

Guests: Anthony Shadid-Michelle Williams

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. I really wish I wasn't about to play the interview we're going to hear. It's our obituary for Anthony Shadid, a journalist we held in the highest esteem, who many of his peers consider the preeminent foreign correspondent of his generation.

While covering stories in war zones, he put his life on the line and on several occasions came close to losing it. In 2002, he was shot and wounded while reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last year, he was kidnapped in Libya by government forces, who held him for a week and beat him.

Not long after, he risked his life again, sneaking into Syria, where government forces have been firing on people and doing their best to keep out foreign journalists.

It was on another dangerous trip to Syria, reporting on the resistance movement, that he died yesterday. He suffered a severe asthma attack brought on by an allergy to his guide's horses as he and a fellow reporter were secretly fleeing the country. He was 43.

Shadid won two Pulitzer Prizes for his coverage of Iraq when he worked for the Washington Post. He joined the New York Times at the end of 2009. The Times has nominated him for a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Arab spring. Shadid was an American of Lebanese descent. He spoke fluent Arabic, which enabled him to speak directly with the people he was covering.

We were grateful to Shadid for finding time to talk with us during several of his visits back to the U.S. We're going to hear the final interview he did on our show, which we broadcast December 21.

Anthony Shadid, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So you're covering a part of the world that is remarkably different than it was a year ago. So stepping back for a moment, and you literally are stepping back because you've left the region for a brief vacation, are we heading, do you think, for more democracy in that region or more chaos and sectarian political fighting? Does it feel like freedom is winning, or chaos is winning?

ANTHONY SHADID: Well, you know, I hate to say this, Terry, because it's the easy way out, but, you know, to be honest, I'm really not sure. And I remember I had spent most of the past decade in Baghdad, in Iraq, and I left Baghdad in December, and I remember coming back to Beirut, coming to our home there.

And it was amazing to me how many conversations I was having with people about how dejected they were, how disappointed, how kind of pessimistic they were about where the region was, where the Arab world was. And it felt - I have to say that, you know, sentiments as kind of downbeat then as any other moment since I've been in the Middle East for the past 15 years. And so remarkably, just a week or two later, the uprising began in Tunisia.

You know, I think the euphoria of those moments in Tunisia and Egypt has passed. I think there's no question about that. I think there's a lot of anxiety and uncertainty of where we're headed.

I guess after being a pessimist in Baghdad for so long, I remain an optimist. And that's - I think that optimism just comes from this idea that these societies that have been moribund for so long are revived or rejuvenated, are dynamic right now. And that very dynamism, I think, of those societies, you know, still - at least to me, lends hope for the future.

GROSS: You've been reporting on the crackdown in Syria against protestors, and Syria hasn't been allowing in journalists. So how did you get in?

SHADID: Well that, I have to say, that - you know, I hate to talk too much about it...

GROSS: Sure, I understand.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Here's how we break your laws, Syria.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SHADID: Well, but also I hate to be too self-referential because, I mean, I think these - you know, these stories are - first and foremost, it's just, it's getting the story that matters and being able to report the story. But I was frustrated in not being able to meet these people that I had been reporting about for so long.

I think Syria is often covered by phone. You have to talk to activists. You have to try to, you know, read the tea leaves. You have to talk to government officials. And it is remote-control reporting in some ways. And that's - you know, I think that's deeply frustrating, especially coming out of experiences in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere, where it was very much, you know, on-the-ground reporting.

You could embed your writing in the stories and the quotes and the anecdotes of the people you were talking to. That wasn't the case in Syria, and a photographer, a very good photographer and a friend of mine, Moises Saman, and I decided to actually try to get into Syria. They weren't giving visas.

And so we ended up finding activists who - it's kind of a lawless strip of territory between Lebanon and Syria where a lot of smuggling goes on, and these activists were working in that area. And they made it possible for us to get across the border.

And we ended up riding motorcycles on dirt paths from a town called Watihalid(ph) to what's become I think a center of the uprising in Syria, and that's the town of Homs. It was just a matter of - I wouldn't say it was much more than 10 miles or so, but it ended up taking us five or six hours to try to navigate that path.

And, you know, I've done things that I probably wouldn't have done in hindsight, and this might be one of them. It was - turned out to be much scarier than I thought it would be.

GROSS: What made it scarier?

SHADID: Well, I think the idea of getting caught, probably, first and foremost. I had had a bad experience in Libya earlier in the year. You know, I did feel that Syria was so important and that that story wouldn't be told otherwise that it was worth taking risks for, but the repercussions of getting caught were pretty dire.

And, you know, my family, my wife was very anxious, and I think Moises and I were, as well. I think we expected the trip to be a little bit better planned than it was. Once we actually got underway, we realized how we were playing a little bit loose. I think the activists that brought us in there were playing it by ear a bit.

And when I look back on this year, and the reason I think that those risks - you know, again, I'm not sure if I would have done it again given how risky it turned out to be, but when I look back at this year, I think there were two moments that were so inspiring and so remarkable to me, especially again - I hate to keep saying this - but coming out of just the carnage and the disappointment and the record of Iraq.

I mean, Iraq is a society that in some ways has been torn apart or torn apart at least for a generation. But what I got to see in Tahrir Square, in Cairo in January and February, this idea of a new notion of community coming together, a community defining itself on its own terms, a youthful generation, you know, determined to create a place they would live in that was far better than the place their parents lived in.

And watching that being rendered on such a small stage, which Tahrir Square in a lot of respects. I mean, you might have fit a million people in there on some days, but often it was a much smaller stage where you got to see ambitions and hopes and frustrations as well play out there right before you.

GROSS: So we were talking about - we've been talking about reporting from Syria, the risks you took to get in there and the things that you witnessed there that you otherwise absolutely could not have reported on. Were you concerned that the government would start hunting for you knowing that you were there, or did you not file until you safely got out?

SHADID: Yeah, I waited until I got out of the country. And they have such bigger problems to deal with than a foreign journalist at this point.

GROSS: Oh no, they really seem to like arresting foreign journalists from this country.

SHADID: Well, you know, they have a very - a somewhat sinister past when it comes to dealing with journalists, especially Arab journalists and especially in Lebanon. You know, they're horrific stories of what they've done to critics of the regime.

This is a government that plays by the rules of a much older school, and it - and it strikes me time and again how unable it is - and for lack of a better phrase - how unable it is to update itself in some respects. I don't think it understands to this day what it faces in terms of the uprising. And it also - I also don't think it understands how deeply the world has changed since it took power.

GROSS: So you covered the uprising in Libya, and to do that you went into Libya, you risked your life. You, I think it's fair to say, nearly lost it because you were captured by Gadhafi's soldiers. What was the discussion like that you had with the three journalists that you entered Libya with about whether it was worth going in or not?

SHADID: You know, we all, I think, went in - I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think - I think we all went in separately and we ended up meeting up in Benghazi. Tyler, Tyler Hicks, a photographer, and Lyndsey Addario, another photographer, and I had been covering the fighting on the front lines for quite a while, and Steve Farrell, a videographer and also a reporter, joined us later.

You know, I think if I take a step back and look at what was going on there, the events that are taking place are so overwhelming, and they feel so historic and so important that you feel a real challenge to get it right. You feel a real challenge to do justice, I think to what's happening around you.

And I think that sometimes does figure into your thinking, that you end up taking risks that you might not have otherwise, and you know, Libya might have fit into that category.

And here's a country ruled by - 40 years by Colonel Moammar Gadhafi. It was one of those places I had no sense of. I had been there once before. It was a surreal experience. It happened back in 1995. It was a country that felt to me beyond traumatized. I mean it's very - civil society had been wiped out. Almost every institution that would have knit the country together had been destroyed by Colonel Gadhafi.

So you come into this country, and you're seeing it, you know that in some ways Libya could prove to be the most fundamental of any of the revolutions that happened in the Arab world because what was overthrown was so complete.

What was left behind was so minimal. And what might emerge is going to start from scratch. You know, very powerfully. So you know, I'm sure like all this stuff is kind of playing on the back of our minds.

And then, you know, I hate to say this, and I hope it's not the case, but I'm sure ambition was as well, that you want to be there. You want to see what's happening. You want to do your job as a journalist, and I think in the end we all got taken by surprise by how quickly things unfolded and where we ended up.

GROSS: So you and three other journalists entered Ajdabiya together, and you describe this as having being the front line of the desperate rebel stand against the advancing Gadhafi forces. You weren't sure if it was wise to go in, but you went in. Did you discuss the wisdom of it before going in?

SHADID: Well, here - see this is a great example, Terry. I mean this - you know, when I left Hama and what I saw, and I know I took risks to go into Syria and those risks felt warranted to me. I think Ajdabiya I got wrong. And I don't think Ajdabiya was as important as I thought it was at the time and it came at great cost. Not just to us. I mean we lived. I mean our driver was lost in Ajdabiya.

GROSS: By lost you mean you think he died.

SHADID: He - that's right. You know, we came, we were leaving the town trying to go back to Benghazi and, you know, I'd say within a few minutes of leaving Ajdabiya we hit that checkpoint that from a distance we thought was a rebel checkpoint but, you know, when it was too late we realized that this was in fact an army checkpoint that had just been set up by Gadhafi's soldiers, probably, you know, not more than a half-hour before.

GROSS: So what are some of the decisions you have to make on the spot when you realize these are Gadhafi's soldiers at the checkpoint? They will likely capture you if they see you. Do you try to like escape? Do you - I mean what do you do and then what do you do when they take their guns out and ask you to get out of the car?

SHADID: You know, Terry, I don't - the only thing I remember feeling when we hit that checkpoint was fear - almost a paralyzing fear, and we hit it so quickly. Yeah, I think three of us were in the backseat, and one of us was in the front, and we stopped at the checkpoint, and the driver, Mohammed, said journalists, and I'm not sure, you know, why he said journalists.

I think he was as scared as we all were. But the minute that word was said, you could just see the kind of - that sheen across the soldiers' eyes at that checkpoint, you know, just - not even just anger, it was fury. And they began taking us out of the car.

At the very minute that they began taking us out of the car, rebels attacked the checkpoint, and that's where we believe the driver was killed, when the rebels attacked that checkpoint. There was gunfire everywhere. I mean we could see it, you know, the impacts in the soft dirt, and we all made a run for it.

I think Tyler was the first to go, and I followed him, and we stumbled across a sand berm and then just ran for our lives, basically. I mean there was so little decision-making at that point. It was just how are we going to survive.

And I think Tyler - we talked later about it - Tyler was going to try to make a run for it, but, I mean, there was almost no way he could have gotten away. And in the end, we all just sought cover behind a very small concrete school that was set up near the checkpoint.

And once we got there, the soldiers set upon us and, you know, they emptied their pockets, you know, slapped us around, put us on our stomachs and then bound our hands and legs with wire, or whatever they had, actually. I think all of us had something different that we were bound with.

And I remember, it remains, you know, it remains one of the scariest moments of my life. I've, you know, I've had to face death twice in my career as a journalist - once when I was shot in the West Bank, almost nine years ago now, and then this time, and it was the same exact feeling, is that you just - you have to make peace very quickly with the idea that it's over.

And I remember looking up at that soldier, and he says shoot them in Arabic. And you just lose almost every sensation at that point. It probably felt like two minutes before another soldier said something; that feeling seemed to last so long, but then the other soldier that was standing next to him said you can't shoot them, they're Americans.

And I'm not sure if I believed him when I heard that, but you know, I think almost a kind of a, you know, the ability to sense things came back after you heard those words. And then you thought, well, maybe this is going to play out, and you try to get your wits back about you.

But it's, it's tough, and that's feeling, it's, you know, the beatings heal, the bruises heal, you can get over that kind of stuff over time, but I think that fear - how visceral that fear actually was - that's the hardest thing to get over in terms of what happened to us. I mean I think absolutely, we're all going to be haunted - you know, haunted by it from here until we die, is what happened to our driver.

GROSS: Now, you said, you know, that wounds heal, bruises heal. Did your hands heal? You had a - your hands were bound so tightly. You described in your article about this ordeal that they went numb, and you started shouting for help, and I think they loosened the cuffs a little bit. But did you have permanent nerve damage from that?

SHADID: I didn't. I didn't. But that had - I think that was, you know, next to what happened at that first moment we were captured, I think that was the scariest thing because you lose, you just lose reason, you know, and I was sitting on that plane, my hands had gone numb; all I could imagine - I'm a writer, and all I could imagine was that my hands would be amputated.

And it was crazy fear, and I think I shouting for help at that time. And again, you know, even in the worst moments that you experience in some of these places in Iraq - say, in Syria and Libya, you know, they're still, this is a deeply humane culture that you're dealing with.

And I remember somebody coming up to me as I was, I was almost frantic, I think, at that point, and he came up to me, and I could feel that, you know, his breath in my ear, and I remember turning my head thinking he was going to hit me again.

And he got very close to my ear and he whispered, you know, I'm sorry, and it was in English. And it was one of those moments where you just, you know, it almost, you know, I remember - I think I shuddered when I heard that, when he said that to me because even as bad as it was getting and as scared as I was and as unreasonable as I was being, you just realize that there's still, you know, there's still something here and what's going on around you that you don't completely lose hope.

GROSS: So after you were released, you were with three other journalists, did you all have the same reaction about returning to reporting in war zones?

SHADID: I think Tyler and Lindsay understood what they do, the two photographers. They understood what they do and that this is part of what they do and the risk they take.

And I guess I had, I think I went through - you know, I think I had questions of whether I should put myself in these places again, and I think I had to think about what, you know, the worth of what I do as a journalist. And again, that's where I come, you know, what I said earlier, that I think it is important what we do and, you know, maybe I'm just justifying it to myself. I don't know.

Maybe I'll have a clear sense of it 10 years from now. But, you know, at this point, I think when I first got out I just didn't, these risks weren't worth taking, especially after what had happened to our driver - that, you know, that's on us, and it's going to be on us for the rest of our lives.

And then as the weeks pass, I think as you try to heal, you know, both, you know, mentally and physically, you try to make sense of what, you know, what you do as a reporter and as a journalist. And, you know, I hope it is the right call. I hope I don't put too much on my family. I think I've put an - an unfair amount on them already.

But I do come back to that point that I think what we do is worthwhile, and what we do is important. And there's so many, there's so fewer people who do it these days than when I started 15 years ago as a foreign correspondent, that I think it takes on even more importance, especially given the events that are happening around us.

GROSS: Our interview with Anthony Shadid was recorded last December. He died of a severe asthma attack yesterday while reporting on the uprising in Syria. He was 43. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: We're listening back to an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid. He died of an asthma attack yesterday while reporting on the uprising in Syria for the New York Times. He was 43.

So I'm wondering where you feel most at home in the world now. You grew up in the United States. You studied Arabic in Cairo. Your family is from Beirut, and you've been rebuilding your ancestral home there, literally the house. Where do you feel most at home in the world, if any place?

SHADID: You know, I guess home is probably where you want to be. And you know, for me it has to be the family's ancestral home in southern Lebanon. It's in a very remote corner of the country. It's not all that easy to get to. But you know, I think - and my wife and I, I think, feel the same the way, that once we're there, you know, you know, we feel tethered - you know, we feel tethered to it.

I'm not sure how else to describe it, but you know, there's a certain peacefulness, I think, that I feel at least when I get back to that home in Mazra 'at Jamjin.

GROSS: So when you say you rebuilt it, you hired contractors, or you lifted stones yourself?

SHADID: You know, it was a shell of a house. It's a century-old house. It's - my grandmother, you know, was born there. It's stone, and they call it (unintelligible) in Arabic. It's red tile, but it's these very distinctive red tiles that you see often, kind of a Levantine notion of - it kind of, I think, suggests a Levantine community.

I had gone there after the war in 2006. I had covered the war between Hezbollah and Israel. And again, you know, like Libya, like what I'd seen in Iraq, it was a horrible conflict. You know, you spend most of your time in reporting those conflicts just trying to, like, you know, cling on to the humanity of the people you cover, you know, humanity that's so pronounced among the people you cover.

But conflict is scary, and I think conflict really takes its toll, and, you know, at a certain point, you worry about your eyes getting calloused to so much bloodshed and so much carnage.

And I had come out of that conflict very tired and wanting to not do any more, war reporting or however you want to describe it. And I ended up taking a year off and going back to my family's ancestral village and decided - I decided right after the war that I was going to do it and took a little while to arrange lave from the - I was working at the Washington Post at the time.

And then I spent a year doing it, and I found, you know, contractors and workers. My contractor turned out to be a 76-year-old man named Elijan(ph), who wasn't quite up to the task, but we managed to work together. And amazingly, within a year, we got it done. We're still doing things. I feel like every time I go down there, there's a thousand more things to do, but we managed to get it done in a year.

And, you know, for me, it was the first time - I had spent so much time, you know, trying to chronicle other people's lives. It was the first time I actually tried to create something on my own, something that was lasting. And that's, I think, what the house became in the end.

GROSS: Anthony Shadid, recorded last December. He died in Syria yesterday while covering the uprising for the New York Times. He was 43. The book he wrote about restoring his ancestral home is scheduled for publication next month. We are so sorry that he's gone. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Michelle Williams is nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in the film "My Week with Marilyn." We're going to listen back to the interview we recorded last April after she finished making the film. She got her start when she was a teenager and starred in the 1990s TV series "Dawson's Creek." Her films include "The Station Agent," "The Baxter," "Wendy and Lucy" and "Meek's Cutoff."

Williams received her first Oscar nomination for her supporting role in the 2005 film "Brokeback Mountain." On that film she met Heath Ledger, to whom she was engaged. Their relationship and his death are topics she still prefers not to discuss. Last year, Williams received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in the film "Blue Valentine."

Michelle Williams, welcome to FRESH AIR. So you knew you wanted to act by the time you were 13. By the time you were 15, you were on "Dawson's Creek," the TV series.

MICHELLE WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So how did you know?

WILLIAMS: Well, I imagine I knew in the way that a lot of young girls say that they want to be actresses. It's just that I had, because of the way that my life and my family situation and where I was living all conspired together, I had the actual opportunities in front of me.

So I wouldn't say that I had more desire than any other 13-year-old girl. It's just, it was in front of me.

GROSS: How did it get in front of you?

WILLIAMS: Well, we moved from Montana. I grew up in Montana, and I most closely associate to being from Montana. But we moved from there when I was eight. We moved to San Diego.

And there was a kind of wave of kids who were being driven to Los Angeles by their parents for auditions, and I got swept up in it. I wasn't unlikely or unusual for doing it. But you know, I did that for -my mother packed me up in the minivan for two years before I ever got a job, even a commercial job. So it wasn't - it certainly didn't happen quickly or naturally or easily.

GROSS: I don't think I could take that much rejection, especially when I was that young, when you don't...

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think that's the most dangerous part of it and why it's something I wouldn't want for my own daughter, family or friends, because that rejection really leaves its mark on you.

GROSS: Now, you went to a Christian school before starting on "Dawson's Creek"?

WILLIAMS: I went to a lot of schools. I went to - I was homeschooled quite a bit for three or four years. I went to a Christian school for a couple of years. I went to a public school. I changed schools almost every year, every two years.

GROSS: So why were you homeschooled for a while?

WILLIAMS: For a few reasons, I think. A lot of it, I think, had to do with the fact that I was auditioning, and it was a bit of a nuisance to be dragged in and out of school. And when you're homeschooled, obviously there's nobody really to answer to.

And then when I was 15, I got emancipated from my parents. And when you're emancipated, you have to either have your GED, or you have to have graduated from high school. And so from the back of a magazine, we bought this education through correspondence school. It was called ICS, International Correspondence School, bought it for $300, and I finished three years of high school in nine months.

I couldn't - you know, I can barely add and subtract now. It was - it's nothing to write home - my classmates were truck drivers, housewives and inmates. And we would get - I would get sort of monthly updates on what everybody's GPA was.

GROSS: So do you feel like you missed out on something, either on the school experience or on a good education?

WILLIAMS: I feel like I missed out on a good education, but it's a trade-off. The plus is that then I got this TV show. It afforded me six and a half years of practice of work. It was like an acting class, being on "Dawson's Creek," and being able to experiment and say: Am I better when I know all of my lines and I've really practiced them or am I better when I'm kind of off-balance a little bit because I'm tired? Or how about if I try this? Or how about if I try this? What does it look like when I walk like this?

So I got that - you know, it's that Malcolm Gladwell thing of 10,000 hours or something. I definitely have 10,000 hours in front of the camera thanks to that show. So I got a different kind of education, but I do find myself - now I'm 30 - feeling frustrated with the limitations of my own mind.

GROSS: To which I'd say who doesn't.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: But you mentioned you were emancipated from your parents. This is a legal separation that you did for what reason?

WILLIAMS: It was done for work. The notion is that it makes you more appealing, that people are more apt to hire you because they don't have to pay for a teacher, a guardian, and you - a teacher or a guardian, and you can work you can work as an adult. You can work the same amount of hours as an adult. It obviously...

GROSS: So, like, if you legally divorce your parents, so to speak, then you're not treated as a minor on the set?

WILLIAMS: Exactly.

GROSS: So that enabled you to work more?

WILLIAMS: It did. You know, I think it actually is the thing that got me "Dawson's Creek." All the other kids were 18, and I was - I think I was 16, actually, when I got the show. And I don't think I would have been hired had I been a minor. But, you know, there's obviously a lot of danger in that - a kid on their own - basically a kid on their own on a film set. Movie sets are very adult places.

GROSS: Your father had money, at least he did part of the time, because he was a stock and commodities trader and wrote a very successful book about how to prosper in the coming years. And then you had made money on "Dawson's Creek." I'm sure you did well on that. So was it easier for you to reject the commercial route as an actress and take the more, you know, like small theater, independent film route for some of your work because you knew what money was and you had some money?

WILLIAMS: My father grew up very poor in Billings, Montana. He, I think, carried that mentality with him while we were growing up, and that was passed on also. I had started auditioning for things when I was, gosh, 10 years old and didn't get a job until I was 12 or 13. So I had this idea in my head that money is something that comes in and out of your life. And I also had this idea in my head that I don't know where my next job is going to come, and that I'm more used to not getting things than I am to getting things. And so when I got "Dawson's Creek," I spent those six and a half years as a bit of a hoarder or something.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

WILLIAMS: I was always trying to find the most - the least expensive apartment and moving from place to place so I could get a lower rent, get a better deal. And also I was on "Dawson's Creek" for a very long time without getting movie parts or theater parts or anything that I really wanted. So I felt like I had to be very careful with what I had.

GROSS: That's not your typical picture of the teenage star - that kind of frugality.

WILLIAMS: I suppose also we didn't really identify as teenage stars. This was before the onslaught of sort of the weekly tabloid magazines that have made I don't know what they've made. We didn't identify, and I think I speak for us as a group, with being teenage stars. There were no paparazzi sent out to Wilmington to take our pictures and follow our every move. We were kids who were allowed to behave in a way, in a normal way without the kind of scrutiny that I think exists now.

GROSS: Though it wasn't, I mean you're post "Beverly Hills 90210," so -and that, they got all the tabloid coverage though.

WILLIAMS: I wonder if it was because of being in Wilmington, North Carolina, because we were so removed.

GROSS: Yeah. That might be it.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

GROSS: That might have something to do with it.

My guest is Michelle Williams. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: Let's get back to the interview with Michelle Williams that we recorded last April, after she finished shooting "My Week with Marilyn." She's nominated for an Oscar for her performance in that film. She received Oscar nominations for two earlier films, "Blue Valentine" and "Brokeback Mountain."

Let me play a scene from "Brokeback Mountain." And I think this is a movie that really established you as a movie actress. It's also the movie where you met Heath Ledger, with whom you had a child, and he played your husband in the film. So in this scene - just a little bit of background on the movie. So the movie is about Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal's characters, who fall in love while on a summer job herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain. And - but homosexuality is so taboo, they can't carry on the relationship outside of Brokeback Mountain, and the Heath Ledger character is really confused about who he is sexuality.

So each of those characters marry. Heath Ledger's character marries you, your character. But at one point you see him kissing Jake Gyllenhaal. And in this scene you're divorced. Heath Ledger's at your house visiting with the kids on Thanksgiving. You're doing the dishes. He's standing by the sink, and you tell him that you know what he and Jake Gyllenhaal, the character's named Jack Twist, were really doing on their fishing trips together.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN")

WILLIAMS: (as Alma) You ought to get married again, Ennis. Me and the girls worry about you being alone so much.

HEATH LEDGER: (as Ennis) Well, once burned...

WILLIAMS: (as Alma) You still go fishing with Jack Twist?

LEDGER: (as Ennis) Not often.

WILLIAMS: (as Alma) I used to wonder how come you never brought any trouts home. You always said you caught plenty, and you know how me and the girls like fish. So one night I got your creel case open, night before you went on one of your little trips - price tag still on it after five years - and I tied a note to the end of the line. It said, hello, Ennis, bring some fish home. Love, Alma. And then you come back looking all perky and said you'd caught a bunch of brownies and you ate them up. Do you remember? I looked in the case first chance I got and my note's still tied there. That line hadn't touched water in its life.

LEDGER: (as Ennis) That don't mean nothing, Alma.

WILLIAMS: (as Alma) Don't try to fool me no more, Ennis. I know what it means. Jack Twist.

LEDGER: (as Ennis) Alma.

WILLIAMS: (as Alma) Jack Nasty. You didn't go up there to fish. You and him...

LEDGER: (as Ennis) Now, you listen to me. You don't know nothing about it.

WILLIAMS: (as Alma) I'm going to yell for Monroe.

(SOUNDBITE OF CRYING)

LEDGER: You can't. Or I'll make you make a (bleep) fool out--

WILLIAMS: (as Alma) Get out of here! Get out!

LEDGER: (as Ennis) You too...

WILLIAMS: (as Alma) Get out! Get out! Get out of my house!

GROSS: Great scene. That movie was so life-changing for you in terms of your personal life and in terms of your profile as an actress. And for all the wrong reasons you became even more famous after Heath Ledger died. Does it amaze you the way one film can change your life? The way one choice, the choice to do this movie, can totally change your life?

WILLIAMS: I feel like yes, it did, it changed my life. But I also feel like every movie that I've made. I mean that was just in a very sort of public way.

GROSS: After "Brokeback Mountain" and after Heath Ledger's death, you had to learn to live with the tabloids, the kind of thing that you avoided on "Dawson's Creek," maybe because of where it was shot. You got the full force of it, you know, later in your life, and it's a part of celebrity tabloid culture that both worships and bullies celebrities for entertainment. How did you learn to live with that?

WILLIAMS: I suppose I haven't. Trying to think about how I would expand on that. No, that's pretty much the full answer. I haven't learned to live with it.

GROSS: Right. I will move on.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: And ask you about your actually lovely singing voice.

WILLIAMS: Oh, really?

GROSS: Yeah. Well, I mean it's not like I've heard you sing a lot but at the end of the comedy "The Baxter"...

WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...you sing and you have a really lovely voice. And to prove that...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: ...I'm going to...

WILLIAMS: No. Oh no, please don't.

GROSS: Why? Why, why? Why do you feel that way? And let me expand on that.

WILLIAMS: My mommy would be so happy.

GROSS: You know, you are so - you will take any risk for your acting and are so shy about your singing or so uncomfortable with it.

WILLIAMS: I am. Well, I think I'm a much riskier actor than I am a person. There's this Flaubert quote that I love, that I'm going to get slightly wrong. But it's something about I want to live - I want to live the quiet life of the bourgeois so that I can be violent and unrestrained in my work.

That works for me. And for some reason I let myself between action and cut go into a kind of freefall, a place in a space where I am allowed to think, behave, move, appear in any way that I see fit. Unfortunately, I don't let myself do that in my own waking life. But at least there's some place for it.

GROSS: Is singing not a part of your work to you? Is that much more personal?

WILLIAMS: I had to do it again recently in the last movie that I did. I had to sing. And I would put so much work into it, a lot of rehearsals and recording it around the piano and with technicians. And when the day came and they started to do the playback on the set and I had to hear my own voice and then move my mouth to it, I couldn't take it and decided that it was going to be easier for me to just sing live.

And so that's what I did and that's the performance that, well, you'll see in the movies...

GROSS: Is this the movie where you play Marilyn Monroe?

WILLIAMS: It is. Yes.

GROSS: So Marilyn, I find Marilyn Monroe a fascinating actress. I didn't like her when I was growing up because I always thought, like is that what a woman is supposed to be? Is that what a man expects? But now that her era is over and I can look at it more from a distance, it was such an interesting construct. I mean I think it was Gloria Steinem who once described Marilyn Monroe as like a transvestite.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Like a certain construct of a woman. A kind of a woman who doesn't really exist but you could create her, you could create those hips and that bosom and, you know, the hair. And so tell me what it was like for you to try to embody this creation of what an ideal woman is.

WILLIAMS: Well, one of the fascinating things about it that I didn't realize is that I didn't assume going into it is that it was a creation. Marilyn Monroe was a shtick. Like Groucho Marx, like Charlie Chaplin. It was something that she put on. It was a character that she had honed and developed with such attentiveness and such detail.

She spent so much time developing this persona, learning how to hold herself, learning how to walk correctly, learning how to move her head like a queen when she walked into a room, tricks that she would keep in her mind to appear a certain way. But what was on the inside was as ordinary and as confused, or maybe even more so, than you or I.

So Marilyn Monroe was something that took four hours to get ready in the morning and probably an hour to take off at night.

GROSS: So to become her, you probably had to wear like hip padding and a bullet bra.

WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And did it change like the way you walked, the way you moved, to suddenly have that shape - the Marilyn Monroe shape?

WILLIAMS: It did, because I like to disappear, personally. I like to go - which, and also she did too, mind you, but not when she was Marilyn. But I like to kind of slink through the streets and, you know, hope that nobody sees me and use my invisible powers. But I have to say, the reaction that you get when you put on these hips and you cinch up your waist and you put your shoulders back and you let yourself be observed, it's intoxicating.

GROSS: Did you just automatically have a wiggle when you...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: ...when you put all of the Marilyn Monroe accoutrements on?

WILLIAMS: No, I had to work for my wiggle. I remember that I turned 30 while I was making the movie and I remember on September 9th I found my wiggle on my birthday.

GROSS: How did you find your wiggle?

WILLIAMS: You know, it's a feeling. You just have to catch the right feeling. It can't – you can't really have any – the technique has to sort of lay somewhere underneath, ideally. And, you know, it came from watching her movies and trying to study how she's moving her hips that makes this sort of undulation happen.

I read somewhere that she had shaved off half of an inch on one of her heels to make this kind of unevenness, but then I read that that wasn't true. And I'm practicing, practicing, constricting my knees. So all this is behind it, but then really you've just got to breathe it.

GROSS: Well, Michelle Williams, thank you so much for talking with us. It's really been a pleasure. Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thank you. It really is all mine.

GROSS: Michelle Williams, recorded last April. She's nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in the film "My Week with Marilyn." Here she is singing in a scene from the film.

(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM "MY WEEK WITH MARILYN")

WILLIAMS: (As Marilyn Monroe) (Singing) Started this heat wave by letting my seat wave and in such a way that the customers say that I certainly can can-can. We're having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave. The way that I move that thermometer proves that I certainly can can-can. We're having a heat wave...

GROSS: Michelle Williams in a scene from "My Week With Marilyn." This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

TERRY GROSS, HOST: The new film "Return" centers on a returning vet and her struggle to readjust to civilian life. It stars Linda Cardellini, who's best known for her roles in the TV series "Freaks and Geeks" and "ER." It co-stars Michael Shannon from "Boardwalk Empire" and "Take Shelter" and "Mad Men's" John Slattery. Film critic David Edelstein has this review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN, BYLINE: The coming-home genre is so rife with stock ingredients, that first I'd like to tell you what Liza Johnson's very fine drama "Return" doesn't do. The camera doesn't move in on returning-vet Kelli, played by Linda Cardellini, as the sound of battle rises and she's back in her head on the front lines.

The film doesn't give you what I call the psychodrama striptease, in which a past trauma is revealed piece by piece until you're finally, at the end, shown the essential bit. In fact, nothing in particular is said about what happened over there - including where over there is, Iraq or Afghanistan. Kelli mentions dead animals by the side of the road, knowing, like everyone, people who died, and some weird stuff, and that's it.

So why is what's not in "Return" important? Because it means the film is always in the present tense, the here and now, and that's crucial to its power. The deepest moments are, paradoxically, of surfaces, of Kelli staring out a car window at the nondescript Ohio Rust Belt landscape broken by the occasional tidy neighborhood or industrial plant or boarded-up business.

There are many long shots out her car window, but they're not, as in so many indie movies, meant to convey the sameness of everyday life. Cardellini's face is too expressive. Her Kelli is visibly relieved to be home, but she's not remotely at home. Some of us have waited since "Freaks & Geeks" to see Cardellini in a role this rich. She gives a remarkable performance, and one that's almost entirely inward.

Kelli does at least attempt to come out of her shell for her family: a young daughter, another barely a toddler, and a husband played by Michael Shannon in a good, finely shaded portrait of a limited man. He's awkward with Kelli, going on about his plumbing jobs, clearly keeping something back, and their attempts at physical intimacy are increasingly rare.

She impulsively quits her factory job for reasons she can't articulate. She throws back drinks with girlfriends, but it seems like a mechanical simulation of her old hell-raising spirit. Her only respite comes briefly, with an older vet, Bud, played by John Slattery, whom she meets in a court-mandated class after she's arrested for drunk driving. Both their licenses are suspended, but that doesn't stop him from giving her a lift.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "RETURN")

JOHN SLATTERY: (As Bud) Jesus Christ, it must suck coming home with all these (bleep) Oprah (bleep). You know, when I came back, nobody gave a (bleep). Nobody said a word - which sucked in its own way, but at least there wasn't anybody up my (bleep) trying to get me to tell them what was it over there that happened that made you the kind of person who would walk his (bleep) cat on a leash?

EDELSTEIN: I know, a lot of bleeps in that scene. It tells you a lot, that someone so volatile is the one person who makes Kelli feel safe. Slattery captures brilliantly what's dangerous about some addicts: They do a better job acting like they're in the moment than people who are actually in the moment. His Bud is a hoot, and yet erratic and scary, and we pray that Kelli doesn't go down that same road.

There must be 100 moments in "Return" in which director Liza Johnson and her actors could take condescending short cuts and slip into working-class stereotypes, but I didn't detect any slippage, only gifted performers disappearing into their characters. Near the end, there's a sequence in which the movie threatens to turn melodramatic, but the film is stronger for pulling back. The unresolved ending is one of the few of late that haven't made me want to cry: Cheat!

"Return" is quiet and naturalistic, but its plainness is suffused with anguish. With the barest of means, Johnson and Linda Cardellini evoke the emotional limbo of a vet who comes home to find no signs of the war we're fighting and no way to make sense of where she was and what it meant. That lack of resolution, of a traditional story arc, is what makes the movie feel so real. It's what "Return" doesn't do that has a lingering sting.

GROSS: David Edelstein is film critic for New York magazine. "Return" is now playing in New York and Los Angeles, and on February 28th will be released across digital platforms, including video on demand and iTunes.

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.