She appears fragile, yet Naomi Watts has the grit to overcome the pain of her father’s death, the will to be known as more than “Nicole Kidman’s best friend” and the talent to be a star. In this candid interview, she talks to Ginny Dougary about her life, her career challenges and the devastation of losing her dad.
Naomi Almost-Mega Watts is quite right when she says that she’s not the sort of actress who lights up a room. Admittedly, it would take a Day-Glo aura to penetrate the dungeonesque gloom of the Manhattan hotel foyer we meet in, but it does take a while to register that the childlike figure approaching me – fair hair scraped back in a stubby ponytail, pale face with no make-up, jeans, flat silver pumps, baggy bleached-blue cardigan, clutching a takeaway coffee – is a Hollywood star.
Her prettiness is often commented on, but what impressed me in the films I’ve seen her in is her grittiness. Even in a schlocky-horror teen movie such as The Ring (2002), the intelligence of her acting makes the viewing more compelling. In genuinely interesting films, such as David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive in 2001 and Alejandro González Inárritu’s 21 Grams in 2003, which won her an Oscar nomination, Naomi fills the screen with her raw, almost uncomfortable portrayal of despair, anger, bitterness. There’s a palpable willingness to mine whatever it takes from her own life to realise the truth of her character.
Read the whole story, only in the December 2005 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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