Actress Michelle Williams a gives rare insight into the pain of raising a daughter without her father Heath Ledger.

After losing Heath Ledger in 2008, it’s rare to both see and hear Michelle Williams talk so publicly about the death of her ex-partner and father of her young daughter.

However, in a move saturated in candour and emotion, Williams has spoken to Porter magazine about the loss of Ledger and what that tragedy has meant for her 11-year-old daughter.

Playing the role of heartbroken mother trying to start a new life in her latest movie, Manchester by the Sea, Williams felt compelled to touch on the elements of the new film that shine a light on her own experience.

“In all honesty, for pretty much everything else, I feel like I’m a believer in not fighting circumstances, accepting where you are and where you’ve been. In pretty much all senses but one,” she told Porter for the magazine’s Incredible Women issue.

“I would be able to go totally down that line of thinking were it not for Matilda not having her dad. You know that’s just something that doesn’t … I mean, it just won’t ever be right.”

Despite the emotional and open admission, Williams told the magazine that both mother and daughter have found a new normal together, and discovered their own version of happiness without Ledger in the picture.

“I watched [Matilda] warm in the sun, in her swimsuit, get on her bicycle and smile and wave as she rode off to go meet her friends. I went back into the house and sobbed because of this incredibly simple moment ― common everyday happiness.

"I really felt like in that moment, like wow, we’ve done it. Not only are we OK, she’s happy. Life has brought us to a place that’s not just surviving, but thriving.”

Williams and Ledger met on the set of Brokeback Mountain back in 2004, and the couple announced the birth of Matilda in October of 2005.

Despite parting ways amicably three years after they began dating, Williams released a statement shortly after the death of Ledger, writing that her heart was "broken" and requesting privacy from the media.

“I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl who is the spitting image of her father. All that I can cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day.

“His family and I watch Matilda as she whispers to trees, hugs animals, and takes steps two at a time, and we know that he is with us still. She will be brought up in the best memories of him," she said at the time of Ledger's death.

Since then, Williams has shied away from the public eye and commenting on the loss of Ledger.