Inside Her New Life
TEN MONTHS AFTER SPLITTING WITH LIEV SCHREIBER, THE ACTRESS BOUNCES BACK AT HOME AND WORK
You would hardly know that Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber have been broken up for nearly a year, judging by the photo she recently posted on Instagram of her ex snuggling with their two sons on the beach. “Happy Father’s Day to this great dad,” Naomi gushed.
Such a graceful gesture is a measure of how the Oscar-nominated, Australiaraised actress, 48, is thriving during this time of upheaval in her personal life. “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,” Naomi says. “I mean, I’m single. I’m co-parenting. I’m doing OK.”
This is the first time Naomi has been on her own since she fell for Liev, 49, around the time they both worked on the 2006 film The Painted Veil. Though they never wed, they have two sons — Sasha, 9, and Samuel, 8. “The kids seem to be in a good place,” Naomi says. “It’s a tricky situation, and so far, I feel really good about how we’ve dealt with it.”
SCREEN TIME
Naomi has been throwing herself into work even more than usual lately. She’s currently appearing in two TV series — Showtime’s reboot of Twin Peaks (reuniting her with director David Lynch from her breakout 2001 film Mulholland Drive) and Netflix’s Gypsy, which casts her as an unstable psychologist. “I call her Australian Resiliency,” Brenda Vaccaro, who co-stars as one of her patients, tells Closer. “She’s just so amazing and strong.”
She’s also been seen this year in the films 3 Generations, The Book of Henry and Chuck, the last of which she shot with Liev before their breakup. Still, they came together for the red-carpet premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, with Liev planting a kiss on an appreciative Naomi’s cheek. “We’re parents together, so we’ll be together for the rest of our lives,” says Liev. Adds Naomi, “We still want the best for each other.”
While her recent movies haven’t done well critically or commercially, she hopes to reverse her fortune with The Glass Castle, an adaptation of Jeannette Walls’ best-selling memoir, hitting theaters in August. “She hates working in anything that flops — she takes it personally,” says an insider. “It does affect her, but she soldiers on.”
That applies to her personal life as well. Liev has been pictured out with other women, and though Naomi has been dating, “she’s not seeing anyone special,” the insider says. “She’s not obsessed with finding someone. When it happens, it happens.”
Right now, she’s got her hands blissfully full with her two little men. “She wrote me after the show wrapped and told me how happy she is to be at home with her boys,” shares Brenda. “She loves to read to them and cook for them — she’s such a wonderful mom.”
— Bruce Fretts, with reporting by Rick Egusquiza and Ilyssa Panitz