Michelle Williams has given her first major interview since Heath Ledger’s tragic death in January confessing that the pain of missing her daughter’s father gets worse with each passing day.

Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger met in 2004 on the set of “Brokeback Mountain” and fell in love and soon welcomed a daughter in their lives. The young actors separated after three years together.

The world received a shock in January of this year when Heath Ledger died of a prescription drug overdose and Michelle Williams retreated from the public eye as much as she could. She has now broken her silence, telling Newsweek that she is still very sad about her former lover’s death.

Asked how she has been managing these past months, the 28-year-old compared her grief with a moving river, “always changing.” She confessed that in some aspects it is increasingly worse, as “the more time passes, the more you miss someone.”

Williams also said she was focusing on raising three-year-old Matilda Rose, whom she wants to protect from the paparazzi and offer as normal a life as possible. The Academy Award-nominated actress said she would take a year off from acting so she can concentrate on being a mother.

She revealed another reason for sadness – the paparazzi that have surprised her again and again in coming up with ways to approach her and her daughter. Although she loves acting and it has “saved her life over and over again,” Williams says she is willing to walk away from it if this is necessary to protect Matilda.

Williams and Ledger had split less than half a year before when he passed away. The Australian actor had written a will two years before his daughter was born, leaving his fortune and belongings to his parents and siblings. Earlier this year, the late actor’s father revealed the Ledger family had given up rights to his estate so Matilda could inherit everything.