Naomi Watts

Naomi Watts

Naomi Ellen Watts (born September 28, 1968) is a British-Australian actress most famous for her roles in the film remakes of The Ring and King Kong, as well as her Academy Award-nominated role in the film 21 Grams.

Early life

Watts was born in Shoreham, Kent, England, where she lived until the age of eight. Her parents, Peter and Myfanwy Watts, separated when she was four years old, and when she was seven, her father died. Following her father's death, her mother relocated the family to the town of Llangefni (more specifically Llanfawr Farm), on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales, where they lived with Naomi's grandparents, Hugh and Nikki Roberts. Although her mother occasionally moved the family around Wales and England, usually to follow boyfriends, she always ended up returning to Llangefni. Watts lived there until she was 14. Then, during a trip to Australia, her mother became convinced it was "the land of opportunities" and moved the family to Sydney in 1982. Her grandmother Nikki was Australian, which made it easier to obtain the documentation necessary, since Naomi and her family were entitled to Australian citizenship.

Her father was a sound engineer with Pink Floyd (his manic laugh is featured in The Dark Side of the Moon) and her mother (who also contributed a line to Dark Side of the Moon's "The Great Gig in the Sky") is described by Watts as a hippie "with passive-aggressive tendencies" who used to threaten to send her and her brother to foster care to convince her grandparents to take care of the family, since her mother had virtually no money after her father's death.

In Sydney, she attended several acting schools (and in the very first lesson in the first school, she met Nicole Kidman, with whom she shared a taxi home from class and is still good friends). In 1986 she took a break from acting and went to Japan to work as a model, but the experience, which lasted for about four months, was fruitless. Watts describes it as one of the worst periods of her life. Upon returning to Australia, Watts went to work for a local department store and from there she went to work as assistant fashion editor with an Australian fashion magazine. She only returned to acting when a casual invitation from a colleague to participate in a small play rekindled her passion for the scenic arts and prompted her to quit her job and dedicate herself completely to making it as an actress.

Career

Watts' career began in Australian television, where she appeared in commercials and television melodramas such as Home and Away and Brides of Christ. She was featured in a supporting role in the acclaimed 1991 Australian indie film Flirting, which starred future Hollywood up-and-comers Nicole Kidman and Thandie Newton. As Watts made the transition from Australia to the United States, she landed a supporting role in the little-seen 1995 film Tank Girl, playing the part of "Jet Girl."

Finding quality roles at first proved difficult for Watts in the Hollywood system, as she appeared in the short-lived series Sleepwalkers and numerous B-list productions such as films like Children of the Corn. Gradually, Watts garnered supporting roles as in Dangerous Beauty.

However it wasn't until 2001, when Watts caught the attention of critics and audiences as she appeared in David Lynch's highly acclaimed Mulholland Drive. The film, which premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, won Watts high praise. She won the National Society of Film Critics Award as Best Actress and the National Board of Review award as Breakthrough Performance of the year. Watts worked with director/screenwriter Scott Coffey on Lynch's Mulholland Dr., where Watts had her breakout performance. Her next film, the semi-autobiographical Ellie Parker, grew out of the friendship forged between Watts and Coffey. Soon after the quality and importance of Watts' roles improved and quickly shot the actress to the top of the Hollywood A-list. In 2002, she starred in one of the biggest box office hits of that year, the English language remake of the Japanese horror film, The Ring. The following year, she starred in the film Ned Kelly opposite Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, and Geoffrey Rush; as well as the Merchant-Ivory film Le Divorce with Kate Hudson. It was her performance opposite Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro in director Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams that earned Watts her first Academy Award nomination as Best Actress.

Since then Watts has been one of the most in-demand actresses. She produced and starred in the well-received independent picture We Don't Live Here Anymore. She reunited with Sean Penn and Don Cheadle in The Assassination of Richard Nixon, teamed up with Jude Law and Dustin Hoffman in David O. Russell's ensemble I ? Huckabees, and starred in the sequel to the Ring, The Ring Two. Aside from balancing both independent projects as Ellie Parker, she managed to star in the biggest remake of them all, 2005's King Kong. The role, which was immortalized by Fay Wray in the original, proved to be Watts' most commercial film yet. Directed by The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, the film won high praise and has since grossed more than $400 million worldwide.

Watts starred in The Painted Veil with Edward Norton and Liev Schreiber, released in December 2006.

In May 2006, Watts was named a special representative to the U.N. program for HIV/AIDS.

Personal life

Watts previously dated director Daniel Kirby and most famously actor Heath Ledger for several years. Since 2005, Watts has dated actor Liev Schreiber. They are currently expecting their first child.

Watts is a close friend of Benicio Del Toro, with whom she co-starred in 21 Grams. After filming her most recent movie, The Painted Veil, she converted to Buddhism, claiming, "I have some belief but I am not a strict Buddhist or anything yet. There was a lot of excitement and energy there."

Watts divides her time between homes in Sydney, Los Angeles, and London.

Naomi Watts Filmography:Actor
2008 Funny Games
2007 Eastern Promises
2006 The Painted Veil
2006 Inland Empire
2005 Stay
2005 The Ring Two
2005 Badges of Courage
2005 Ellie Parker
2005 King Kong
2004 The Assassination of Richard Nixon
2004 I Heart Huckabees
2003 Le Divorce
2003 Ned Kelly
2003 21 Grams
2003 We Don't Live Here Anymore
2002 Undertaking Betty
2002 The Outsider
2002 The Ring
2001 Mulholland Dr.
2001 The Shaft
2000 The Wyvern Mystery
1999 Strange Planet
1999 The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer
1998 Dangerous Beauty
1998 The Christmas Wish
1997 Sleepwalkers
1997 Under the Lighthouse Dancing
1996 Bermuda Triangle
1996 Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering
1996 Persons Unknown
1996 Timepiece
1995 Tank Girl
1993 Gross Misconduct
1993 The Custodian
1992 Matinee
1992 Wide Sargasso Sea
1991 Brides of Christ
1990 Flirting
1986 For Love AloneQuotes

“Pain is such an important thing in life. I think that as an artist you have to experience suffering.”

“That's one of the lucky things about getting the success later on. I know how I want to dress, I know what kind of house I want to live in, I just know more about myself, and that's true about the roles I want to play and what parts of myself I want to express. You're just more in touch with yourself.”

“There's nothing as strong as King Kong.”

“If those two men (Kong and Driscoll) were welded into one, that would definitely make the perfect man. Adrien Brody plays the writer. He has all the words. Kong has all the soul, and all the power as well.”

“We are perfect for each other. I like someone thoughtful, serious and intelligent, but I also want him to be fun and silly. He has to be able to make me laugh ? if a man can do that, he's pretty well got me.”

“There was a time I was very much blaming the way I felt on L.A, that it was a vacuum of creativity, of humor or anything organic, and I was really angry at the place. But then today I feel completely different - I love L.A.!”

“I mean it's weird because the thing that I love about acting is the fact that I can help people feel things, know themselves or feel less alone. It's my form of expression, in the same way that someone might paint a picture or sing a song in that you're hoping that it moves somebody outside of their own way of thinking.”

“She (Fay Wray) looked up at me and went, 'You're not Ann Darrow. I am! ... At the end of the night ... she whispered in my ear 'Ann Darrow is in good hands.' Those were great parting words.”

“Mum put me in drama classes when I was about 14. I'd been going on about it for some time, so maybe it was a way to shut me up.”

“Oh, I'm definitely a wild child.”

“The parallels are being drawn between me as a mother and Samara's mother and what I have done to my child and what was done to her by her mother, ... So there's things for the audience there to play with and look into, and that's clearly why Samara's drawn to me.”

“Fear on Film: Special Effects”

“It's scary, ... I was so nervous about doing anything that would make a child feel uncomfortable ... so we tried to work out all these systems, you know, 'Just give me the signal that we're not acting anymore.' ”

“I think I have better taste now than I did then,”..
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