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Naomi Watts was born on September 28th, 1968, in Shoreham, Kent, in England. Daughter of Peter and Myfanwy Watts. Her father was a real name within the music industry, who'd worked as tour manager and sound engineer for The Pretty Things for four years before taking on the same duties for Pink Floyd and her half-Welsh, half-Australian mother was a designer by trade (she started as a window dresser for Burberry's then moved into film) but was also a keen amateur dramatist, having dumped her thespian ambitions to raise the kids.
In 1972, when Naomi was 4, her parents would divorce, leaving her and her brother Ben in the care of her mother Miv. She, still very young, would take the kids to stay with her parents, with her three sisters and with several poorly-chosen boyfriends, travelling through all over the south - Kent, Sussex, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and more. Years later, when Peter and Myfanwy had enjoyed a reconciliation and were considering giving their relationship a second chance, disaster struck. In August 1976, Peter was found dead in his Notting Hill flat, a heroin overdose being suspected. He was only 30. Naomi was just 7.
When Naomi was 10, Myfanwy would remarry and in 1982, having scored work in Australia, Myfanwy returned convinced that Down Under was the Land of Opportunity. She shipped the family off to Sydney where she proved to be absolutely correct in her decision. She found plenty of work as a stylist on TV ads, moving into set-dressing and prop buying, then becoming a costume designer on the glamorous soap opera Return To Eden. Naomi's stepfather, meanwhile, enjoyed reasonable success with his band - unfortunately, his marriage to Myfanwy would end in divorce.
By now Naomi was enrolled in acting classes by her mother, quickly moving to more advanced lessons. With her mother's commercial work opening new doors, she auditioned for a series of TV ads. At one, she was one of three girls who had to sit around all day nervously waiting to discover which of them would be chosen for a bikini ad. Naomi lost out but gained a great deal more when, sharing a cab home with the other failed candidate, the pair struck up a strong friendship. The other girl's name was Nicole Kidman.
Naomi was not a great success at school, and at age 18 she failed to graduate and moved into modelling, signing to an agency and spending the next year in Japan. After an endless raft of auditions, often ending in her being told she wasn't pretty enough, she returned to Sydney where, following in her mother's footsteps, she was hired to work in advertising for a department store who wanted to appear more youthful and stylish. So successful was she that she was quickly poached by Follow Me, an arty fashion mag competing with Vogue, where she was given the post of Assistant Fashion Editor. She was then poached again, whisked away to become full-on Fashion Editor at another magazine. Things were looking good.
Though she'd more or less given up on acting, at 20, she was persuaded by one of her former drama class buddies to make up the numbers at a weekend drama workshop. She walked into work that Monday morning and resigned. It was a courageous move that was almost immediately justified. Two weeks later she was invited to the Australian premiere of her friend Kidman's Dead Calm and met John Duigan, director of Kidman's next picture, a sequel to Duigan's indie hit "The Year My Voice Broke", to be called "Flirting" (1991). Duigan would ask Watts to call his casting director asap. She did and was hired.
But "Flirting" (1991) was not actually Watts' film debut. That had occurred three years earlier, in 1986, when she'd won a small role in "For Love Alone", starred by Hugo Weaving and Sam Neill. "Flirting", though, would be a new beginning, with Naomi now dedicated to the thespian cause.
Kidman would soon be off to Hollywood and into the arms of Tom Cruise (coincidentally, Watts had earlier starred in a well-known ad where she turned down a date with Cruise in favour of her mum's roast lamb), proving to Naomi that Hollywood was an attainable destination. Refusing a role in the long-running soap "A Country Practice" as she didn't want to get stuck for years, she kept at her classes and instead scored a peachy part in the miniseries "Brides Of Christ" (1991), an Aussie-Irish production, with future Oscar winners Russell Crowe and Brenda Fricker.
The same year, Naomi appeared in soap "Home And Away", playing Julie Gibson, a paraplegic. In the show at the same time was another bound for overseas success, Guy Pearce. Later cast members would include Danielle Spencer, now Mrs Russell Crowe, and Heath Ledger, Watts' boyfriend for two years once stardom had come her way.
To achieve stardom, though, she would have to cross the Pacific to Los Angeles. Clearly, it would make sense to call Kidman in search of advice or support as Kidman, aligned with Cruise, was now a powerful player in Tinseltown. But Watts was loth to abuse a friendship that was not nearly as strong as it would become. Eventually, it took Rebecca Rigg, an actress and mutual friend of both Kidman and Watts, to make the call herself, advising Kidman that Watts would soon be on the blower.
Kidman didn't just offer cool holidays. Her connections saw Watts being seen by all manner of industry powerbrokers. Indeed, they were all over her, and she decided to move to LA. But the only concrete result of any of it was a small part in Joe Dante's "Matinee" (1993), a charming homage to monster flicks and 1950s cinema entrepreneur William Castle, starring John Goodman.
Despite the Kidman connection, work was simply not forthcoming in Los Angeles. So, when jobs were offered back home in Oz, Watts leapt at the chance to work and widen her experience. First would come "The Custodian" (1993), a tense thriller with Anthony LaPaglia and colleague Hugo Weaving (earlier the star of Naomi's film debut). She'd next rejoin John Duigan for a small part in "Wide Sargasso Sea" (1993), based on Jean Rhys's feminist prequel to Jane Eyre.
Watts would find a larger part in "Gross Misconduct" (1993), directed by George Miller, who'd earlier produced Flirting. Here she played a college student of Jimmy Smits, seducing him and proving to be a passionate and very adventurous lover. When the affair's discovered, though, she cries rape, sending the movie into a strong court drama where her hugely dodgy relationship with her father is gradually revealed. Some praised the film as a taut drama. Others, concerned by its shameless scenes of sex and masturbation, condemned it as exploitative.
Returning to Los Angeles for good in 1993, Watts was disappointed to find that the agents, producers, directors and casting directors who'd been all over her before now didn't recognise her. There were so many acting classes, so many auditions, so many failures. She later recalled having to drive for hours into the Valley to pick up three sheets of absolute rubbish, then drive back the next day to see a casting director so uninterested he couldn't make eye contact with her. On another occasion she won an audition with a big-name director and flew back to LA from New York, where she'd been visiting her brother. She couldn't really afford it, but could not let the chance slip - thus she was doubly disappointed when, looking up halfway through her reading, she realised that the director was asleep.
Times were tough. Though she was never so broke she had to take a job outside the industry, she did get thrown out of her apartment for falling behind with the rent, and at one point lost her health insurance. She calmed her nerves with yoga as she endured the endless classes and failed auditions. Kidman remained a good and supportive friend but her continuing success only placed Watts' struggles into harsher relief.
Eventually, of course, her efforts would begin to pay off. 1995 saw her in "Tank Girl" (1995), a crazily ambitious adaptation of the cult comic strip from Deadline Magazine. Mixing live action with cartoons, explosive violence with song and dance routines, it was marked by wild prosthetics and manic energy. It was so ambitious, it tanked.
1996 was a far busier year for Watts in a line of mediocre films. First there'd be "Bermuda Triangle". Next came "Children Of The Corn IV: The Gathering". Part of an increasingly silly Stephen King franchise, this saw Watts in heroine mode as a medical student. Naomi's next appearance would be in "Timepiece", Hallmark's follow-up to their earlier hit "The Christmas Box". Watts then used the experience of paraplegia from "Home And Away" to good effect in "Persons Unknown" (1996), directed by George Hickenlooper, who'd helmed the original short version of Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade.
1997 would see another shot at the big time. But first would come the sweet Australian indie "Under The Lighthouse Dancing" (1997). This was a fine ensemble piece involving six friends gathering on an island for the weekend for the marriage of two of their number. Back in the US, a chance had come her way in the shape of "Sleepwalkers" (1997), a new series for NBC. This saw Bruce Greenwood as a sleep psychologist who founds the Morpheus Institute where a group of dream researchers manage to electronically enter patients' dreams and Watts as founder member Kate Russell, a feisty dream operative who cares for Greenwood more than she ought to, but respects that he's married. NBC pulled the series after just 2 episodes - though all 9 were eventually screened overseas.
Next would come the short "A House Divided" (1998) where she and Gary Hershberger were trapped in a house during the LA riots. Then would come the period drama "Dangerous Beauty" (1998). After briefly reuniting with Hugo Weaving and George Miller when lending her voice to "Babe: Pig In The City" (1998), she moved on to "The Christmas Wish" (1998), another product of American TV.
1999 would bring two more releases. First would come"The Hunt For The Unicorn Killer" (1999), based on the true story of Ira Einhorn. Watts would play Holly Maddux, a young college graduate in 1972 Philadelphia, who falls for Einhorn, a charismatic radical leader and hippie guru. Next she'd return to Oz to join Claudia Karvan and Hugo Weaving (again) in Emma-Kate Croghan's "Strange Planet" (1999) which followed three girls (all roomies just out of college) and three guys (partners in a legal firm) through the course of a year, beginning on New Year's Eve.
And now, at last, came the big break, though it was tempered by tension and massive disappointment. The great maverick director David Lynch had picked Watts from a pile of photographs to star in his next production, "Mulholland Drive" (2001) (the photo had been taken by her brother, Ben). The film, intended as a pilot for a series to rival Lynch's Twin Peaks, was set in a lurid Los Angeles dreamscape where Watts played Betty Elms a perky wannabe actress from Ontario who finds glamorous Laura Harring, who's just crawled from the wreckage of a car accident and is suffering from near total amnesia, in her shower. Together, they set out to discover who Harring really is and, as realities begin to blur, we come to question who Betty really is.
When ABC turned down the pilot (her third series let-down), she and the rest of the principals went to Lynch's house and read him a letter of encouragement they'd written, urging him to go on with the project. Fortunately for them, he did.
Watts would move on to her next project, "The Wyvern Mystery" (2000), a BBC adaptation of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's gothic classic. Then she would starred as a materialistic and hypocritical wannabe in the comedy short "Never Date An Actress" (2001), then taken the lead in another short, "Ellie Parker" (2001), written and directed by Scott Coffey, formerly her co-star in both Tank Girl and Mulholland Drive, she returned to horror with "The Shaft" (2001). This saw director Dick Maas remaking his own 1983 Euro-hit De Lift, now setting it in New York City's Millennium Building.
Despite winning reasonably regular work, Watts was at a real low. But fortunately, it was only two months later that "Mulholland Drive" (2001) premiered at Cannes. Since 1999, David Lynch had been busy. Having secured an extra $7 million from French studio CanalPlus, he'd been beefing up the pilot, rewriting and filming extra sequences. Watts herself had been given a further 18 pages and now Betty Elms could be seen as the dreamstate alter ego of Diane Selwyn, the washed-up and embittered failed actress she'd play later in the movie. "Mulholland Drive" really was a movie now, complete with a typical Lynch roster of weirdos and, with Watts and Harring laying themselves on the line, some of the most erotic lesbian sex sequences ever committed to celluloid. It was something of a sensation, far more than the cult offering people might've expected, and Lynch was nominated for an Oscar. Iwasn't exactly a box office hit, but the tour-de-force from Watts, has garnered an array of critic's awards.
Suddenly, things were looking up for Watts, in work and life. For a year she'd been seeing Stephen Hopkins, the British director of "Lost In Space" and "The Ghost And The Darkness". The pair had actually met back when Naomi was a kid and Hopkins, 10 years her senior, had directed her in an ad. Sadly, they'd only last another year, as Watts' star continued to rise at great pace.
Adding to her newly high profile was her friendship with Nicole Kidman. Between crazed tabloid interest, Kidman had split from Tom Cruise and everybody wanted to know about it. Kidman was engulfed by the press and Watts moved in with her to help support and protect her. When Kidman made her first public appearance after the split, at the premiere of "The Others", she walked up the red carpet flanked by Watts on one side and old friend Rebecca Rigg on the other.
Naomi's final release of 2003 would be her best. "21 Grams" (2003), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, would see her co-star with Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro, the stories of the three main characters being drawn together by a traumatic car accident. Penn would be a professor requiring a heart transplant, Del Toro an ex-druggie and jailbird obsessed with a disciplined life, while Watts would play a recovering addict, trying to keep it together for her husband and two daughters. It was an amazing performance, heartbreaking and deservedly earned her an Oscar nomination and the critics' acclamation as one of the best in her generation of actors.
She starred again with Sean Penn one year later in "The Assassination Of Richard Nixon" (2004) and with Laura Dern, Mak Ruffalo and Peter Krause in the acclaimed indie drama "We Don't Live Here Anymore" (2004). She would end that year with an existencial comedy "I Heart Huckabees", sharing scenes with Jude Law, Mark Wahlberg among others.
Next, having signed an unbreakable contract to do so, she starred in "The Ring 2" (2005), where her character had moved from Seattle to Oregon but not escaped the horror as her son has the ghost of a horribly mistreated little girl trying to possess him. Being directed by original helmsman Hideo Nakata, it didn't surpass irs predecesor but still became a major hit.
Next would come "Stay" (2005). This saw psychiatrist Ewan McGregor temporarily counselling suicidal art student Ryan Gosling. Meanwhile McGregor's shacked up with Watts, a former patient and artist who's also suicidal. Reality's messed with and confusion reigns as director Marc Foster examines the way we perceive things and order them in order to feel secure. That year she would meet fellow actor Liev Schreiber and they would date since, always under the media attention, but keeping their relationship very private.
2005 would end in spectacular style with Peter Jackson's "King Kong" (2005), with Naomi as Ann Darrow, the 1930s starlet who captures the heart of the enormous gorilla. She was under huge pressure to top the efforts of her predecessors in the role, Fay Wray and Jessica Lange, but managed it with something to spare. "King Kong" became one of the year's top grossing movies, earning more than $700 million world wide, and acclaimed by critics as one of the year's best. Naomi had by now, of course, proven herself to be one of the finest screen actresses in the world and it was proven with the acclamation of critics ecerywhere, and she being robbed from an Oscar nomination (again).
In 2006 she stepped into the shoes of the legendary Greta Garbo for a remake of 'The Painted Veil', based on the work of Somerset Maugham. Unhappily married to Edward Norton, she'd engage in an affair that would lead her on a voyage of self-discovery in the Far East. Soon after that she would be start filming two different projects: "Eastern Promises" (2007), directed by legendary director David Cronenberg, where she would share credits with Viggo Mortensen; and 'Funny Games' (2007), a remake of the 1997 Austrian movie directed by Michael Haneke (he also directed the remake), in which she would star as a housewife in a family of three that are brutally attacked and tortured by two psychotic men.
2006 would also bring some very happy news for both Naomi and Liev, as, in late February, they announced they were expecting their first child together.
Naomi Watts now has it made. After years of depressing toil in Los Angeles she can now pick and choose her roles. She deserves it, she's worked hard to become one of the best actresses who've risen to Hollywood prominence.
