Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images It's been nearly three years since Heath Ledger's tragic death, and it still seems to haunt Michelle Williams.
 

The "Blue Valentine" actress appeared almost on the verge of tears while discussing Ledger's prescription-drug overdose in an interview on ABC News' "Nightline." Her eyes full of emotion, Williams revealed that she coped with the pain by reading Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," the critically-acclaimed memoir on grief and loss.
 

"In a strange way, I miss that year, because all those possibilities that existed then are gone," Williams said. "It didn't seem unlikely to me that he could walk through a door or could appear behind a bush. It was a year of very magical thinking, and in some ways I'm sad to be moving further and further away from it."
 

Williams and Ledger fell in love on the set of the 2005 drama "Brokeback Mountain," ("That was happy," she says), and they had a daughter Matilda, now 5 years old. Williams is raising the little girl in Brooklyn; she continues to process her late lover's death.

"I've found meanings around the circumstance but the actual event doesn't have it," she said. "I can't find a meaning for it."
 

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Given her association with Ledger, the subject of Williams' love life will always make headlines. She was once romantically linked to filmmaker Spike Jonze; she's since rumored to be getting cozy with Ryan Gosling, who plays her husband in the buzzy, wrenching drama "Blue Valentine" (for which they are both nominated for Golden Globe acting awards.)

Consider that rumor squashed. At one point, Gosling joined Williams for the interview; addressing the are-they-or-aren't-they gossip, the actor joked, "Creatively, we are doing it." Then he got serious: "No, we're professional."

But he had this to say: "She's like Brigitte Bardot meets Clint Eastwood. ...
 

(Somewhere, Gosling's reported paramour Blake Lively is pouting.)

The emotionally raw "Blue Valentine," which recently got its NC-17 rating changed to an R, opens in theaters Dec. 29.