No wonder Naomi Watts looks radiant. She hasn’t worked in “. . . months”, she
breathes, her wide blue eyes growing wider. “I've really slowed down, turned
down a lot of stuff. This” — she motions to the suite at the Hôtel de
Crillon in Paris, where she is being crimped and powdered for her launch as
the new face of Thierry Mugler’s perfume Angel — “is basically the only work
I’ve done all year. It’s been really nice; the timing has been perfect. I
did one movie three months after Sasha was born, and it was very hard. I was
breast-feeding him through the day and pumping at night, but . . . ”
But, oh, to be Naomi Watts. A neat, sylph-like figure in Prada gladiator
sandals — “bought in the sale!” she trills — and a navy-blue Rag &
Bone short suit, another sale buy — “Love my bargains” — she shows no signs
of turning down the glamour. Apart from a little jet lag — “Yesterday I was
a mess,” she says of her transatlantic journey, boyfriend and sniffly baby
in tow — she looks amazing: clear-skinned, naturally pale and blonde, fresh,
unplumped, un-Botoxed and impressively lean for a woman who gave birth just
a year ago. (And one who might have another on the way. “But I wouldn’t be
discussing that in this interview,” she says politely, but pointedly. Her
publicist later confirms the pregnancy.)
But then, with a string of huge hits — Mulholland Drive, 21 Grams, King Kong —
under her belt, Watts can probably afford to give herself a bit of latitude.
After a decade of well-documented Hollywood mountaineering, she has
thoroughly earned her position at the top of the A-list pile. The days when
she was simply “Nicole Kidman’s best friend” are well past; now Watts is “in
movies I want to be in”, she says. And after the second baby’s out of the
way, it’ll be straight back in the saddle come spring with The
International, a thriller with Clive Owen. Not to mention, at 39, the first
big-name beauty contract of her career.
“You feel like you’re getting older and then something like this comes along,”
she says. “It makes you feel great.” Chosen, she says, for her “chameleon -
like face” and her ability to look “strong in one moment and delicate in
another, sometimes angry and forceful, sometimes vulnerable and tragic”, she
will also appear in a multimillion-dollar commercial created along the lines
of Chanel No 5’s collaboration with Nicole Kidman and Baz Luhrmann.
Certainly, it’s refreshing to see proper grown women, rather than
wrinkle-free teens, promoting beauty products — accomplished working mothers
obviously resonate more with the buying public. “Offers have kept coming
in,” she agrees.
And with the imminent renaissance of the Mugler women’s-wear line, Watts is
also spearheading a kooky fashion moment. Fêted in the 1980s for his
razor-sharp tailoring, shoulder pads and futuristic detail, Mugler’s power
suits and hedonistic lifestyle epitomised the hard chic of the decade. In
the 1990s, however, the label foundered, but the former Paco Rabanne
designer Rosemary Rodriguez has now breathed new life into the brand, with a
chic 20-piece collection, including sharply tailored blouses, denim blouson
jackets and nipped-in safari dresses.
Watts herself hailed the revival by wearing Mugler to the Costume Institute
gala in New York in May, and the new line has so excited the superstylist
Katie Grand that she has been carrying around suitcases of his old clothes
for inspiration. Mugler himself, who has more or less abandoned fashion in
favour of body building, has given it his blessing (and if a recent picture
on the internet of him, naked, ripped and proudly showing off alarmingly
inflated, waxed genitals, is anything to go by, he won’t be back at the
atelier any time soon). “I’ve met him once, in London, and it was great,”
says Watts. “We certainly liked each other. He was definitely a pioneer,
allowing women to look striking and sexy at the same time and very daring.
Young designers all worship him.” She dismisses the suggestion that serious
actresses can’t “do” fashion and fragrance. “It’s a good mix. My films go
down well in France, starting with Mulholland Drive,” she says of her
breakout role in David Lynch’s surreal masterpiece.
If there had been any doubts about Watts’s acting talent, the film’s famous
masturbation scene catapulted her firmly into the limelight. It was
“probably the most difficult one of my whole life”, says Watts, who only
clinched it after a tent was erected around her for privacy. “I just kept
crying all the time,” she says. “David wanted an anger, frustration, but I
just got weepy. After the third take, I remember saying, ‘I can’t do this,
David,’ and he was, like, ‘Okay, Naomi!’ and I was thinking he would [give
me a break]. . . but he didn’t . . . and I’d get annoyed.”
Intense, quivering performances have built Watts’s reputation. “I’m definitely
a sensitive person,” she says. “I cry at the drop of a hat. But I’m not a
victim or weak or anything. I think we all have it, that side. There’s
nothing wrong with it. It’s sort of, crack it open!”
One can’t help feeling that her childhood, filled with unsettling experiences,
might have encouraged this. She was born in Kent: “I’m English, but it’s
complicated,” she says in a delicate Australian accent. “My mother is
half-Australian, and we all moved there when I was 14. I feel a big part of
me is English, but I am very influenced by Australian culture.” Her father,
Peter Watts, a sound engineer for Pink Floyd whose maniacal laugh can
famously be heard in The Dark Side of the Moon, died tragically from a
suspected heroin overdose when she was seven. “I’ve never known what it is
to have a father, but every kid should have two parents.” She has one older
brother, a photographer, whom she is close to. “It was very, very sad for
both of us at the time. You just deal with it, get used to it.” Has she
drawn on this experience in her work? “Of course, I’ve drawn on it,” she
says. “I remember details from the day that I was told he died vividly. But
otherwise, I have few memories of him.”
As a result, she had a barefoot, hippieish childhood, following her mother and
various boyfriends around England before moving to Australia.
“I was horrified,” she says of the upheaval. “At 14, you start creating your
peer group. But my mother promised to put me into drama class, so I went.”
After school — where she met Kidman — she drifted into modelling and acting
in soaps such as Home and Away. Fame did not come swiftly, however. She has
had to work for it. “I’m a hard worker,” she says. “Because opportunities
came to me much later, there’s an underlying fear that it’s going to go
away.”
After a stint of modelling in the Far East, which she hated, she moved to LA
to make it as an actress. “Sometimes I did just four or five things a year,”
she says. She considered giving up countless times, but every time she got
round to packing her bags, “something would come in the nick of time. Oh,
for sure, there have been some shockers”, she says of her early roles. “And
some even recently. There’s always a risk.” Even now, she still feels
nervous. “But feeling nervous is a good thing. Anyone can get famous, but
how do you sustain it?”
After a poor love life — “I seem to attract jerks” — in 2002, she quietly
started stepping out with Heath Ledger, who was nearly 11 years her junior.
They were still in contact at the time of his death earlier this year. “I
don’t like talking about it,” she says slowly. “It’s really personal. But he
was just . . . It’s all so tragic, just deeply, deeply tragic. He was a
wonderful, wonderful person. Words can’t describe it really.”
She is now in a long-term relationship with the father of her child, the actor
Liev Schreiber. Marriage? “Maybe, I don’t know,” she says. “I never say
never, but I’m not desperate to get married. I’m not someone who has always
dreamt of a wedding day. I’m more disbelieving. Or have been.” She pauses.
“Well, that was my original stance. You loosen up about things as you get
older.”
Such a cautious response seems surprising. But there’s none of the usual gushy
rubbish you get from Hollywood stars with Watts — she is a straight-talker,
and if the answer is complicated, then the answer is complicated. “I don’t
operate in the world of schmoozing and cruising,” she says. Instead, she is
pleasantly direct and honest about her conflicting emotions — a maturity
that possibly comes from her childhood experiences. It has also been the
making of her. She’s is a cool, canny, hard-working operator, a keen
deal-broker and bargain- spotter, with the grit to stick at it for 15 years
before reaping any rewards.
Watts clearly knows her own mind, and only now, with children, is she just
beginning to unwind. What about the future? “Next year is going to be big
for me,” she says. “But right now, it’s keeping the family unit together.”
I can't believe English journalists are still talking about the 'Far East'. Would that be somewhere in Asia or Mile End Road?
It's 2008 Camilla, put your pith helmet and Pimms away!
Paul Bartholomew, Shanghai, China
One thing the famous never mention is the ghost nanny
Jane Fleming, WHITTLESEY, United Kingdom