The star of the critically-acclaimed big-screen romance Blue Valentine chats about prepping to play opposite Michelle Willams. “Michelle was on board for six years and I was on board for four years. We had a lot of time to work on our characters,” Ryan tells Milling About host Robin Milling. “Michelle and I lived in the house that our characters lived in, in Carbondale, Pa. We celebrated Christmas and birthdays and we had a budget, based on how much our characters made in their jobs, for grocery shopping… We kind of tried to recreate as much as we could, this life together of memories, so when it came time to shoot it we could draw on it.”