Michelle Williams goes "easy" on herself because she is a mother.

The 44-year-old actress has Matilda, 19, with the late Heath Ledger, as well as Hart, four, and a two-year-old son whose name has not been revealed with husband Thomas Kail has learned to pay attention to the "really important" things in life since becoming a parent.

She told US TV show 'Extra': "You go easy on yourself as much as you can. You kind of, you give up on the small stuff and you, like, focus on a few things that feel really important to you, like a few important values that you can really become known for in your family, like, 'There goes mom, like, harping on about her three big things.' And then, you know, maybe the rest of it, you can really let slide."

Meanwhile, the 'My Week With Marilyn' star is now appearing as a dying woman who chooses to explore her sex life in 'Dying For Sex' and explained as she takes on the part in the Hulu biopic series that she felt "very safe" on set and she likes to think of every project as a "classroom" of sorts.

She said: "To be totally honest, like, I've always looked at my work as a place where I can get out of my comfort zone and where I can learn and grow and change, because it's actually, like, a very safe place to do so, and whatever I find fertile there, I am actually able to take back into, like, my Michelle life.

"So, it's kind of like a little bit of, like, a classroom for me, so I've always appreciated the opportunity to go to it and learn and then come back to my life, which has real actions and real consequences, and take some of what I've been given.

"I know what I took from it, which was her insistence to live her life on her own terms, regardless of what people thought or said or how they might have judged her, or really that she could have failed at her own experiment.

"You know, she had this idea that with the time that she had left, she wanted to open up her life experience, and she wanted to feel bodily pleasure before she descended into pain and then before she descended into the great unknown