Michelle Williams of 'Dawson's Creek' doffs her duds for a 'Killer' stage role - Baring her soul, & more Michelle Williams of 'Dawson's Creek' takes on a steamy stage role What's a nice girl like Michelle Williams doing in a play like this? While her "Dawson's Creek" castmates use their three-month hiatus from the hit show to fatten their bank accounts in Hollywood films, Williams is co-starring in "Killer Joe", a dark and gritty Off-Broadway drama playing in a small SoHo theater. "I have not felt this sort of excitement and fear in the longest time," she says. "I feel alive, I feel challenged, I feel like I'm stretched in every single way, and thats so amazing." Despite the relatively low wages and infinitely smaller audience, Williams' foray into theater was a chance to get away from the safe routine of television acting. "This is soooo invigorating" says Williams, who plays girl-with-a-past Jen Lindley on "Dawson." Not only does "Killer Joe" feature some of the seamiest characters this side of a Jim Thompson novel, but Williams,18, does a full-frontal nude scene on stage every night. In the play- author Tracy Letts' often wickedly funny tale of a dysfunctional Texas family that hires a crooked cop to kill their drug-addict mother for the insurance- Williams plays Dottie, a simple minded virgin whom the cash strapped family offers to the cop as a payment for the deed. 'Unadulterarated joy' 'Yet while the play's trashy trailer park seeting is a long way from the bucolic, upper-middle class neighborhood in "Dawsons Creek", Williams is hardly slumming. "I was in a play when I was 8, and I haven't felt that absolutely pure, unadulterated joy that I got from [acting] until I was doing this." Whether her exuberance can be chalked up to youth- or the fact that her breakfast on a recent sunny morning in a Greenwich Village diner consists of coffee and cigarettes- Williams nevertheless comes off as genuine. She may be a big TV star- "Dawson's Creek" is one of the WB (Ch. 11) network's biggest hits among the Clearasil set- but Williams is thrilled to be living to be living the starving-artist cliche', even if she does have a nice day job to fall back on once her "Killer Joe" run is over. "I couldn't be happier to be making, like, zero money, and I've worn the me dirty, nasty clothes for, like, five days, and I have no place to live," says Williams, who has been sleeping on friends' sofas after her apartment lease recently expired. "Isn't there something magical about it ? I find it romantic." If Williams had a hat, you'd half-expect her to pull a Mary Tyler Moore and fling it happily into the air. Even her awkwardness at doing a nude scene in front of a crowded theater is turned into a life-affirming experience: " I still go down and cry at intermission because it's so cathartic and because it's so freeing," she says. "To be able to come to terms with your flaws and imperfections....in front of strangers is one of oddest and most gratifying experiences I've ever had." But Williams does admit to having a dark side. Playing the withdrawn and abused Dottie, she says, allowed her to come to grips with her own feelings of insecurity and alienation. "I grew up so fast," she says. "I wanted to be 35 when I was 15." A self-professed recluse with a strong independent streak. Willliams was born in Montana and moved to San Diego with her family as a child. She acted in community theater and then snared small TV roles in such series as "Baywatch" and "Home Improvement" before landing roles ina 1994 version of "Lassie" and as the younger version of the alien in 1995's "Species." Unlike her "Dawson" role as the vulnerable Jen, Williams says she was a high school outcast and "a nerd," much of her career. "You should never, ever have to do a movie called "Lassie"- or do a "Species" with things that come out of your face- and be subjected to going to high school," says Williams, wincing at the memory. "I got teased mercilessily, and it made me weird. It made me strange and it made me into something that nobody understood." Home-schooled by her father after her freshmen year, Williams move dout at 15 and headed to Los Angeles an an emancipates minor. After a few more small TV roles, she was cast in "Dawson" in 1998 as a transplanted New York teen of dubious reputation whose pouty good looks shake up the young male population in a fictional small Boston suburb. Williams admits to being totally unprepared for all the hype and hoopla after the show quickly became the WB's highest-rated series in it's debut season. Unlike other young stars suddenly thrust into the spotlight, she purposely shied away from part of the Young Hollywood scene. "It's been a conscious move on my part," she says, "because [fame] is so fleeting. It's such a trap. At the end of the day when the fans are gone and your makeoff is off, you have to be comfortable with what you look like in the mirror." Though she did spend her hiatus from "Dawson" last year co-starring in the big budget slasher flick "Halloween H20," with Jaime Lee Curtis, Williams prefers to keep doing dark little plays like "Killer Joe" during her "Dawson" downtime. "I could fall flat on my face," she says, " but that's the beauty of taking risks. I'm becoming more comfortable with each day and each show. But it's still the scariest thing I've ever done," she says of stage acting. "It's like, bare your body, bare your soul. But I feel like I'm a kid in a candy store. I really do."