Improper Image ‘Dick’ Co-Star, 18-Year-Old Michelle Williams, Rejects The Teen Sex-Symbol Stereotype

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, including posing for sexy magazine covers, playing a high school seductress on TV’s “Dawson’s Creek” and a recent off-Broadway role that called for nudity, Michelle Williams says she is not what you assume she is.

And what you probably assume is that the 18-year-old actress with the bedroom eyes and pouty lips is just another Hollywood sex symbol.

“I am not the breasty blonde with the come-hither stare,” she said during a smoking break on the balcony of her Los Angeles hotel suite, where she was publicizing her new movie, “Dick.”

“It hurts to see yourself represented in that way. I never see myself that way, and I don’t think it’s a proper image to put out there for young girls.

“And I hate that sexuality is perceived as a woman’s only means for success. That’s not what I’m about, and I don’t know why everybody in this business is trying to mold me into this sex symbol. That is not who I am.”

Williams is particularly sensitive to what she sees is a stereotyping of her image after what she termed a “disastrous” cover shoot for a magazine called Maxim. On the current cover, the actress is shown looking sultry in a red slip.

“It was a 10-hour shoot that was all about my breasts and my body,” she said, her voice rising in anger. “It was all about getting me into the shortest and tightest dress that they could conjure up.”

Several days later, Williams said the magazine called and requested a reshoot. “They said I looked like I was crying in all the photos, but I refused to go back and put myself through that again.”

The magazine ran the photos anyway, and those same photos ran in another national magazine, adding more fuel to her growing reputation as a sex symbol.

Williams said the only thing she can do to divert attention away from her sexuality is to seek out roles that do not play on her looks.

In the political spoof “Dick,” she gets the perfect opportunity to alter public opinion of her. She and Kirsten Dunst play innocent and ditzy teens who accidentally become key figures in the Watergate scandal.

The high schoolers meet then-President Nixon (Dan Hedaya) during a school field trip to the White House. He is taken by their bubbly personalities and appoints them official White House dog walkers.

With each successive visit to the White House, the girls get more and more involved with all the president’s men, including chief of staff Bob Haldeman (Dave Foley), national security adviser Henry Kissinger (Saul Rubinek) and presidential counsel John Dean (Jim Breuer).

It is just a matter of time before they run into Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch), who are portrayed as bumblers who transform the girls into major players in the Watergate mess.

Although Williams said no research was required for the role because the girls were supposed to be naive and uninformed, she already possessed a wealth of knowledge about Watergate and the Republican Party.

Her father is a Republican, she said, and even ran for state senate twice in her home state of Montana (her family moved to San Diego when she was 9).

“I grew up in a political household, and my father always encouraged me to have an interest in politics. I was well aware of Watergate before this movie, although I never imagined I would one day play a teenager with a crush on Richard Nixon.”