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Naomi Watts waited a long time to become a star.
“It was a grind. That 10 years before I met David, I became so locked up and I felt worthless. My agent pulled me aside and she said: ‘We need to have a heart to heart.
Honey, you are too intense. You are freaking people out.’ I went: ‘Yeah, no shit.’ I was desperate! I was behind on my rent; I was getting evicted. I didn’t know what to bring to this room,” she recalled at Zurich Film Festival.
“They told me I wasn’t funny last week, so now I am trying to be funny. They told me I wasn’t sexy – I’m trying to be sexy. You reshape yourself and try to read the tone of what is needed. That’s how it went and I couldn’t be myself anymore. I was either an extreme version of myself or a diluted version of myself. It took a genius like David Lynch to see beyond all that weirdness I built up, undo it and get to the real me.”
The resilience she built up from moving a lot as a kid was helpful, however.
“You also have to know why you love it. Are you in it for the right reasons? My goal wasn’t just to be famous. I loved disappearing into these characters. I really cared and continued to investigate. I still do. There’s always more to learn.”
Watts received the Golden Eye Award at Zurich Film Festival. During the ceremony, she also recalled these difficult first years of trying to become a successful actress, “which had a lot of dry spells.”
“And then, mercifully, I met David Lynch in my late 20s and he changed my career.”
“Mulholland Drive” is widely considered as her breakout.
“That film gave me the most incredible role that affected people. To this day they still watch it. It’s still on these ‘bests’ lists. I’m just very, very proud to be a part of that film.”
During the masterclass at the fest, Watts said she was also encouraged by Nicole Kidman.
“She said: ‘All it takes is one thing, one thing could change everything. That didn’t make sense to me for a very long time. Until David Lynch, and then it became very real.”
Right after “Mulholland Drive,” she starred in horror classic “The Ring.”
“I tried to say ‘no.’ There’s no certainty to anything you do, ever,” she said.
“My agents were excited about this. I said: ‘Wait. I just got this critical acclaim, so I want to instantly go into a Hollywood blockbuster-y movie?!’ I fought with my agent at the time. I didn’t know it was going to be a massive hit! I woke up the horror genre, in a way. It was a lucky, lucky break.”
Watts also earned raves for “21 Grams” – “Extraordinary things can happen when you get tired and irritable from doing things too much,” she said, recalling that intense shoot.
“If there’s any theme in my work, it’s grief. It’s why I do what I do: I’m trying to figure out the meaning of my life. Another one is identity. I love the story [that asks]: ‘Who are you?’ That also comes from my moving around as a kid. I was always on the outskirts of the group, trying to find my way in.”
Watts’ recent role, in Ben Shirinian’s “The Housewife,” addresses that too. In the film, set in the 1960s, she plays a seemingly perfect housewife – but one who hides a terrible post-war past.
“I never played a character like this, even though I look for flawed women and I’m not afraid of unlikeable. But this was extreme,” she said.
She said: “I knew what I was stepping into. I knew it was going to be a daunting, haunting understanding. A character like that comes to you at night, in your dreams.”
Ending the masterclass, Watts admitted it took her a while to stop focusing on other people’s opinions.
“Vulnerability is a superpower. It has taken me a long time to know that, and own that. I wish I’d learn earlier on to be more myself and [care] less about pleasing people. Some people are born with that level of confidence – I was never that person.”
“I still have a lot of self-doubt, but I don’t pretend it’s not a real thing. I try to see it as a gift. It’s more effective than just bullshitting your way through it all.”
Being open about her hardships, as well as menopause, proved to be liberating, she said.
“Menopause became a huge topic of conversation, because I went through it early on in my life and had no clue what was happening with my body. Once I talked about it with my partner, who is now my husband [actor Billy Crudup], and he was supportive, I went: ‘How about I just own the story?’ I’m in on the joke, although it’s not actually a joke. Why do we just suffer, instead of getting some normalcy? Just own it.”
She recalled her first conversation about it with Crudup.
“I was crying in the bathroom, trying to scratch off my estrogen patch. I told him what was going on, so nervous, and I thought: ‘He’s not gonna want to be with me anymore!’ He said: ‘Hold on. It’s great that you are taking care of yourself. Why are you ashamed?’ It was so sweet… And sexy. I felt safer than I ever felt.”
She ended up founding Stripes Beauty, a brand designed for women navigating perimenopause and menopause.
“Men have to be curious and compassionate. And our job, ladies, is to share the story.”
