IN ALL HONESTY

Self-aware, upbeat and with a host of new roles in film and television, Naomi Watts talks work, family and friendship with Sophie Tedmanson. Styled by Christine Centenera. Photographed by Emma Summerton.

Naomi Watts is feeling empowered. She is petite and bare faced, wearing just a singlet and leggings. Sitting in a hotel room in Las Vegas, of all places, she is hours away from receiving an Achievement in Film Award at the CinemaCon industry showcase, in recognition of her extraordinary acting career. Newly single (we’ll come back to that later), Watts is embracing life and work with a fresh perspective: juggling raising kids and making movies, talking freely about female desire and ageing gracefully. She is strong and happy, with a new energy around her. Enlightened, even.

Like the best of actresses Watts is a chameleon – we know her for her intense, intelligent character studies that have earnt her two Oscar nominations and industry-wide respect; as the somewhat shy British-born Australian who made it to Hollywood (thanks in part to David Lynch and Mulholland Drive) after a decade of toiling the audition circuit; as Nicole Kidman’s best friend from before they were famous; as the “normal” star who prefers to cycle with her kids to school through the streets of New York rather than use a driver.

Yet just when you think you’ve read all there is to know about her, Watts will suddenly open up and throw you a curve ball, like her musings on female desire.

“We don’t explore desire from a female point of view that much, particularly for women my age,” she says. Watts, who turns 50 next year, is referring to a storyline in Gypsy, the new Netflix TV drama she stars in as a therapist who pushes boundaries with her clients (to explain more would ruin the plot).

“That makes it [ Gypsy] so much more appealing for me, because there’s this fear as you edge into your mid-life that it’s all done and dusted and that it’s all over, and that’s just not the case. I think this is kind of a cautionary tale and what [writer] Lisa Rubin is trying to do. If someone else is doing it [addressing female desire] for you, you don’t have to go there, we feel safe in our nice little comfort zone, but it doesn’t mean to say we can’t fantasise or … This is what my character does, she acts on her desire, probably a lot more than you want to, obviously, because there are going to be major repercussions, but desire doesn’t go away just because you are ageing.”

Watts is middle-aged, yes, but her life is far from being half over, in fact, she is going through something of a renaissance, both personally and professionally. This new Naomi Watts is refreshingly open, honest and amusing. When we last spoke, two years ago, she seemed distracted. Today, speaking over Skype from Vegas, she is funny and carefree.

The actress may be renowned for her raw, emotional performances on film, including The Impossible and 21 Grams, and has three movies coming out this year – The Book of Henry, 3 Generations and The Glass Castle – but she is embracing TV and quick to remind me that’s where she began: “I did some TV back in Australia … remember the old Home and Away!” she says, smiling.

“I’ll try anything,” she adds. “I feel like the work comes to you, and sometimes you just end up doing it and I’m not even necessarily sure why. It has greater meaning than just for the audience, you think: ‘This is going to be part of my life’s work, this has come to me.’ Of course, we create our own destiny and we are in control creatively of making these choices, but I feel it’s interesting how they land in your lap sometimes, it’s like: ‘Oh right, this is why it’s here’, because there’s something connected to my own life that I’ve got to understand better. That sounds quite convoluted, but I just feel like there’s always something to learn out of it yourself.”

Watts is known for being a method-style actor, bold in her character choices and allowing her roles to consume her for the sake of art. Her latest character as a therapist is a role she embraced through personal experience.

“I play a cognitive behavioural therapist, so I saw a couple of those people with my own story and observed for those reasons,” she says. “CBT therapists are all about controlling the thoughts and look at how the mind has so much power over our lives, so if you control the thought patterns you can actually change your way of thinking and behaving. So I had to learn that.”

Sam Taylor-Johnson, who directed the first two episodes of Gypsy and co-produced the show with Watts, says she is “a dream to direct, a brilliant actress who has mastered her craft. She has the presence of a star but without a shred of diva behaviour.”

Asked to describe Watts’s personal traits as a woman, mother and actress, Taylor-Johnson says: “Naomi as all those things, has, at first glance, a fragility and vulnerability that makes you protective over her. But don’t be fooled, she’s a badass woman with fierce talent, which is extremely seductive.”

Gypsy is not the first time Watts has seductively explored female desire on screen. As Betty/Diane in Mulholland Drive (2001), her character’s tryst with her friend added to the film’s cult following. That film famously gave Watts her big break in Hollywood, and began a long-term friendship with the secretive auteur Lynch, “a dear, dear friend”, who cast Watts in the much-anticipated new Twin Peaks series, which airs this month. True to everything Lynchian, when I ask Watts what she can tell me about Twin Peaks she mimes a zip closing her mouth. “I’ve only been allowed to confirm that I’m in it. It’s not even that I have this great secret: I actually don’t know; I’ve been in the dark as much as anyone!” she tells me, grinning. Filming was so shrouded in secrecy, she says, that the cast even received scripts with the other actors’ lines blanked out. So how does that work? “You just trust David Lynch,” Watts says. “You walk in and say: ‘I’m all yours’ and you just assume you’re in safe hands. It doesn’t matter if you fall, you fall. It’s David’s world and it’s fun to go there!”

It is obvious the pair have a close bond beyond director and muse. “He’s such a wonderful person to be around,” says Watts, who describes Lynch as her mentor. “I want as much time as I can get in front of that man, he’s just a dream. Even if it’s on set, or up at his house drinking coffee or vin rouge, as he says, it’s just quality time, and he’s one of the cinema greats who is a teacher to us all, and virtually every living film-maker is influenced by him or stealing from him in some way. It’s just good to be in contact with that kind of mind and that kind of person, who is really one of the most unique human beings I’ve ever known.”

I remark that it is a nice synergy that she has come full circle, having worked with Lynch at a turning point in her career and now again at a pivotal turning point in her life.

“I hope so!” she says, grinning and leaning towards the camera and holding up her fingers crossed. “I mean, for me, all things crossed, literally. It’s interesting, your work is never completely consistent, you can be a roll and then a couple of things don’t turn out the way you want them to, so you lose momentum

“I THINK THAT AS WE HURTLE TOWARDS THE FINISH LINE WE GET THAT EXTRA BIT OF SPEED”

and then you’re not the first choice/hot thing or whatever it is. But you just get used to it and it doesn’t matter. I’m here to tell the stories, not just to go to work and get paid by great actors and directors; it’s more than that. It has to be stuff that you’re connecting with, if it’s bringing something back into your own life. Like these scripts, these stories, these characters, they all have to be part of my self-evolution and personal growth. If it’s not growing me, then what’s the point? I’m just interested in these women I’m playing taking me somewhere and helping me reflect on things I’ve been through or places I’m going to go … I do have a certain amount of energy now.”

The feminism and gender equality push that has swept the world and Hollywood, coupled with streaming services allowing for braver content, has resulted in a new wave of TV content and in turn bold roles and stories for women, particularly older women – think Winona Ryder in Stranger Things, Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange in Feud, and the extraordinarily talented cast led by Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, both of whom starred in and produced Big Little Lies.

I ask Watts if her energy for work is in part because there are better roles being offered for women her age, or is it that she’s in a better place in her life and is therefore more confident to take them on?

“I don’t know if its confidence or better roles, but I feel like there’s greater volume now in that women’s stories are being welcomed and embraced more, and I think part of getting older is that we get more energy, because we don’t want to be shipped off and popped away,” she says.

“We don’t like to be told that our time is up, so I think that as we hurtle towards the finish line we get that extra bit of speed. I feel it among my peers, not just actors but all types of people in different careers. I’ve got a lot of female friends and we’re all talking about: ‘What can we do now?’ and: ‘What has led us here? What haven’t we done?’ and: ‘What else do we want to do?’”

Watts lives in New York with her two sons Sasha and Kai from former partner Liev Schreiber, who she split from last year after 11 years together.

When the inevitable separation question comes up in our conversation, Watts takes a deep breath and says: “I mean, I’m single, I’m co-parenting. I’m doing okay. There are good days and bad days and Liev and I are on great terms and we’re trying to do our absolute best for the sake of the children and we hope to keep moving forward in that way. He’s a fantastic dad, a wonderful, wonderful man, and we still want the absolute best for each other. So that’s pretty much all I’ll say.”

The boys, who are just 17 months apart, are now her focus and she admits to struggling with “mummy guilt” while trying to achieve the elusive work-life balance. They were even partly involved in our cover shoot, displaying their artistic flair by illustrating a pair of sneakers for their mother. Kai, the youngest, painted semi-political slogans. “It was so cute, one of them was all rainbow oriented and the other was sort of all political slogans like ‘no hate!’ and ‘peace!’” Watts says.

She says she has learnt how to compartmentalise. “When I shut off at the end of the day I close the door on work.” She continues: “The work is extreme and long, intense hours and then you get a break and you get to really muck in and burn off that mummy guilt, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last month … doing pretty much every basketball game, and picking up and dropping off. You try to catch up and go into overdrive and I also try and manage doing some of that during the week as well, but there are times when you just can’t do it. There are days when I think: ‘This is so hard to manage everything’ and then there are days when you are on top of it and you can. I think the ‘mother’s guilt’ thing is just there in every single mother from the moment you give birth and it’s not going away, but it is such a waste of time. I wish we could just know to enjoy it a bit better at the time, and of course, you do, it’s not like I’m here suffering or complaining in the slightest bit. There’s nothing better than watching these little kids grow into themselves and you think: ‘Wow, of course you would become this or that, you were that on day one.’ They really are their own little people and you want to be there and guide them with values and things, but you also want to move out of the way and let them be their own little people.”

Watts has spent the past few months throwing herself into work and the nurturing embrace of her family and close coterie of friends. These include the famous (such as Nicole Kidman, whom she met on the set of Flirting in 1991, and who was on the phone to her just before our interview) and the not-so-famous, including US-based friends she has known since Mosman High School – producer Emma Cooper (who is producing Watt’s next Australian film, Penguin Bloom) and former journalist Sarah Bryden-Brown.

“Naomi rarely leaves anyone behind. If you’ve ever been in her heart, you’ll always be in her heart,” says Bryden-Brown, co-founder of Onda Beauty, who reconnected with Watts when they both relocated to New York several years ago. They now catch up over wine and TV, or girlie weekends away at Watts’s beach house.

“She has a thriving, wonderful group of girlfriends who move in and out of her day-to-day life with the same rhythm as sunshine. They span NYC, LA, Sydney and London. Every one of them is as busy as she is, and I know everyone cherishes the time they get together. Naomi is a great supporter and cheerleader within the group. She loves nothing more than to hear your news, introduce you to someone you should meet, share her ups and downs with you and send you inappropriate texts. She’s also good at getting everyone together for dinner or drinks. Often.”

Back in Vegas, Watts is about to get ready for her award ceremony. She is nervous. “I get very, very shy on stage in front of people, it’s not an area that I enjoy. I feel very uncomfortable, but I feel very grateful nonetheless.” But later, all made up and in a stunning Miu Miu dress, she exudes confidence on stage. A former fashion editor, Watts loves dressing up. “I do love fashion, it’s a form of expression and a way of communicating who you are in the world, and I still love it.”

As we sign off I mention that she seems empowered, like she is enjoying a joie de vivre, and she smiles.

“Yeah, I am,” she says. “I feel like there are a lot of things that I’ve done that I wanted to do, and I feel satisfaction with that. There are still things I haven’t done and there are still things I could do better, and things I want to learn. But I try to balance it, and it’s a big job, that’s the thing. But I do feel happy and I wish I had, looking back, the strength of mind that I have now, in earlier years. But I don’t know … I feel like in my 20s I didn’t have that confidence, and it doesn’t surprise me that things weren’t going the way I wanted them to go. I had more to learn I suppose. I’ve always thought of myself as a late bloomer.”