Michelle Williams does not want to talk about sex today. Not the sex on Dawson's Creek (the WB show on which she appears each week as semireformed vixen Jen Lindley), not sex in the theater (even though she appeared naked onstage last year in an off-Broadway production) and not sex on cable TV (this month on HBO's If These Walls Could Talk 2). Being a sex symbol, says Williams, 19, simply isn't her career goal. "Sex symbol, sexpot, that's worthless to me," she snaps. "Gutter filth." Instead, browsing through the hushed aisles at the Heritage Bookshop in Los Angeles, Williams only wants a good novel to snuggle up with. She peers at a Thomas Pynchon, considers a Philip Roth and asks if the store can find an original copy of Dostoevski's Notes From Underground. Proving she just isn't a literary tourist, she also pauses in her browsing to mention the joys of Ayn Rand, Herman Hesse and Anais Nin. Finally, she settles on a first-edition collection of Tennessee Williams plays, which sets her back nearly $300. Williams began collecting rare books when "all of a sudden I had the money," thanks to the immediate success of Dawson's Creek three years ago. "Some are so old, you can't really read them," she says of her rarest volumes. "But I touch them. And I smell them. And I run my hands over them. And I have an affair with them. It's about as interesting as my sex life gets." She exaggerates, of course, considering her recent nine-month relationship with 30-year-old director Morgan J. Freeman (Hurricane Streets, Desert Blue). Professionally, she has tried all those come-ons with James "Dawson " Van Der Beek, and this month she goes even further, locking lips with actres Chloe Sevigny in If These Walls Could Talk 2. In the erotically charged, lesbian-themed HBO drama, the pair do some serious cuddling in a nude love scene that only cable could broadcast. "It's a really vulnerable place to be," says Williams of her role. "But I'm also really glad that my first love scene was with a woman. I think that everybody is curious by nature." "This is a brave thing to do," says executive producer Ellen DeGeneres. "I'm really proud of her because she could get slammed." Adds Martha Coolidge, who directed Williams and Sevigny in the film, "She really believed in the sort of humanist, antidiscrimination idea behind the whole project." Williams admits that she probably didn't give the lovemaking scene as much thought as she once might have. "Having just done nudity onstage [in the off-Broadway production Killer Joe], I was sort of fearless about it and felt brazen and, you know, liberated. Which may have been a dangerous way to feel." The actress has felt that way before, having posed for some R-rated photos that eventually made their way onto the Internet. "They're all about my breasts," she says of the pictures, originally shot, not for high art, but for magazines such as Maxim and Bikini. "That's just not who I am, and it makes me feel kind of... dirty." It also made Williams feel like giving her then publicist the boot, which she did last year. "I didn't want teen girls or my little sister thinking that that's a woman's power, that's how girls should look," she explains. Williams says she is sure that little sister, Paige, 16, will support her HBO performance, as will her mom, Carla, 44. Boyfriend Freeman approved, even though "the thought of somebody else touching your lover's body or knowing things only you should know is a really tricky thing," she admits. And Dad? "I'm not sure what my dad's going to think." Chances are that few things about their daughter would surprise Williams's parents (who are in the process of divorcing). Larry, 56, and Carla Williams raised Michelle and Paige (who have a half brother and two half sisters from their father's previous marriage) in the Montana lumber and farming town of Kalispell (population: 16,000). It was, Williams says, "a really small, beautiful, but at the same time industrial, dirty town." An outdoorsy kid, Michelle snow skied at age 6, Jet Skied by 8 and bonded with her father early over boxing matches on TV. "He was pretty much my best friend growing up," Williams says of her father, a commodities trader and round-the-world adventurer who twice ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate as a Montana Republican. "He taught me to read and love books and to love travel and be independent." After the family relocated to San Diego, Williams began finding work in local theater productions, television commercials and even in a 1994 film version of Lassie. With her heart set on acting, she quit high school after her freshman year and with the help of her mother, a schoolteacher, completed her final three grades in one year via correspondence classes. "I can't really remember not wanting to act," says Williams. "The opportunity to do plays was given to me at a really early age, and I never wanted to be without it." At 15, after completing her second film role, in Species, she had herself declared a legally emancipated minor and left home for Hollywood. There, she lived alone in a series of apartments on the earnings her small roles brought in. Looking back on her move to Los Angeles, Williams says, "I don't know if I would have had the guts to do it now as opposed to when I was 15 and was fearless. In a lot of senses I wasn't [ready for it]." Nor, later, even after spots on Step By Step and Home Improvement, was she ready for the instant notoriety that came with Dawson's Creek. Now in her third season on the show, Williams takes care not to criticize the series that made her famous. But she admits steady work can be "like punching in a timecard," and, with movies a likely part of her future, the bonds of a six-year contract pinch a bit. "I can't really imagine doing another TV show after this," she says. Still, there are perks, among them the waterside home where she lives in the tiny North Carolina village of Wrightsville, 10 minutes from where Dawson's shoots. "I went to a psychic yesterday, somebody who came highly recommended," recounts the actress. "And she said, 'You live in a warm place, it's so full of light.'" While Williams doesn't know how many of the psychic's predictions she should take seriously (including the acquisition of a dog and her mothering of "one or more" children), the warm, light-filled home seems right on target. "I worked hard to make it mine," she the actress, who painted the walls herself, hung the lighting, replaced the doorknobs and stocked the dwelling with secondhand furniture, an oil-can collection, an etching of a saint she found by the side of a road, and of course, all those rare old books she keeps buying. Every week she hosts a poker game, usually attended by Dawson's cast members Kerr Smith (Jack) and Joshua Jackson (Pacey). And lately, Williams has become a presidential-debate junkie. "This is my first year being able to vote, and I'm just f***ing thrilled," reports Williams. "I've been paying taxes since I was 15 and have always been really upset about the fact that I couldn't vote." In contrast to her father, the former Republican senate candidate, she describes herself as fiscally conservative amd socially liberal--and a Bradley supporter. Away from her retreat, during her annual three-month-plus hiatus from Dawson's Creek, Williams has gambled on a couple of movie roles, portraying the screaming student of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween H2O and, opposite Kirsten Dunst, a schoolgirl who stumbles onto the Watergate burglary in Dick. Later this spring she'll go back to the boards as part of the revolving New York cast of The Vagina Monologues. In the future, there's a film that she and fellow actresses Megahn Perry and Amy Danles have written for themselves, about three girls who meet in a brothel. It's hard, of course, not to see a pattern to many of her projects. "My therapist knows that sex defines a lot of my roles," says Williams with a confessional smile. "We're very, very aware of this. I know all about why, where it stems from." But then again, sex is something she just doesn't want to talk about.