LOS ANGELES — Michelle Williams has been talking about artistic journeys — her own and the one at the heart of "The Fabelmans," the film that just earned her a fifth Oscar nomination — and she pulls out her phone to show me a photo of her 17-year-old daughter, Matilda, joyfully holding her little baby brother, the 3-month-old currently sleeping in Williams' room here at the Hotel Bel-Air.
Matilda is wearing a Bob Dylan T-shirt, which Williams bought and constantly wore half a lifetime ago when she was a teenager living in Wilmington, North Carolina, and shooting "Dawson's Creek." Williams has long wanted to take Matilda to Wilmington, but that's a road trip that hasn't happened yet. "I always thought, maybe I'll get a job, and it would take me back," Williams says. "Maybe someday."
Williams was 17 when she went to Wilmington in 1998 to begin her six-year run on "Dawson's Creek." It wasn't long after she had moved from San Diego to Los Angeles, living on her own as an emancipated minor, sleeping on the floor on a foam mattress, subsisting mostly on takeout pizza.
