ミシェル・ウィリアムズ 彼女は言います “learned a lot” 遊んでから スティーブン・スピルバーグ‘s mother in the upcoming film The Fablemans.

で ファベルマン premiere Sunday at AFI Fest in Hollywood, カリフォルニア, Williams told PEOPLE that playing the character Mitzi Fabelman — loosely based on Spielberg’s own mother, リア, だった “a great place to live” 俳優として.

“自分自身, I’m a little quieter, I’m a lot shyer,” the 42-year-old actress said. “など, to live as this person for this period of time was really… I learned a lot, and I hope I take a little bit of that love of life with me.”

Williams emphasized that her and the cast of the movie — which also includes Gabriel LaBelle, ポール・ダノ, セス・ローゲン, Judd Hirsch, Jeannie Berlin, Robin Bartlett and Julia Butters — “love each other a lot” after making such a personal film with 75-year-old Spielberg.

“Every time that we’re sort of brought back together and we get to see each other again, it’s like coming home,” 彼女は人々に言った.

“I think seeing how connected [スピルバーグ] is to his childhood is really inspiring, that that’s a place that he continues to draw from,” Williams added about working with Spielberg.

5月, ウィリアムズ 言った バラエティ 約 being asked to play a character based on Spielberg’s late mom in the semi-autobiographical project.

“We were sitting around the house in COVID, with one day looking a lot like the next, and my phone beeped and I had a message that Steven wanted to talk to me,” 彼女は言いました. “I couldn’t comprehend that he might want to work with me. I thought he had a question or something. Then he got on the Zoom and told me that he wanted me to play this person, his mama.”

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She added of the movie, “それはおかしいです, it’s sad, it’s kind of everything. It’s the muchness of life. We’re trying to reflect all of that.”

先週の水曜日, Spielberg told ハリウッドレポーター that his parents had been “nagging” him to put them on the big screen prior to their deaths.

“They were actually nagging me, ‘When are you going to tell that story about our family, スティーブ?’ And so this was something they were very enthusiastic about,” 彼は言った.

He also shared what finally prompted him to make ファベルマン: “I started seriously thinking, if I had to make one movie I haven’t made yet, something that I really want to do on a very personally atomic level, what would that be? And there was only one story I really wanted to tell.”

Spielberg’s mom Leah died in 2017 で 97 and his dad Arnold で死亡しました 2020 で 103.

Spielberg — known for classics like E.T., Jaws, ラスベガスで撮影しなければなりませんでした, ジュラシック・パーク, Schindler’s List and many more — said ファベルマン は “the first coming-of-age story I’ve ever told.”

“My life with my mom and dad taught me a lesson, which I hope this film in a small way imparts,” 彼は言い​​ました THR. “Which is, when does a young person in a family start to see his parents as human beings? 私の場合, because of what happened between the ages of 7 と 18, I started to appreciate my mom and dad not as parents but as real people.”

ファベルマン is in select theaters Nov. 11. It opens nationwide this Thanksgiving.