seotransport: Naomi Watts: How the actress became a Hollywood power player

By Martyn Palmer

Last updated at 6:32 PM on 13th February 2011

Naomi Watts has been shedding the Hollywood glamour to toughen up for her latest film role as real-life undercover agent Valerie Plame. Taking on a new identity and concealing your own? It’s a lot like being an actress, she tells Martyn Palmer

'I went from being an actor for hire to an actor that directors wanted to cast,' says Naomi

With her slender frame and skyscraper heels, Naomi Watts looks like a strong wind would knock her sideways, but the fragile appearance is deceptive. There’s a determination inside the petite actress that stood her in good stead for her role as a tough-as-nails CIA operative in her latest film, Fair Game.

Her son Samuel was still only a few months old when she found herself being drilled at a government-run ‘boot camp’ in Virginia, in preparation for playing real-life agent Valerie Plame, who was thrust into a political storm in 2003 when her identity was leaked, apparently by White House officials. Naomi had to go through the kind of training a real spy would face – learning how to use a gun, handle herself in a fight and generally acquire the physical skills to make her performance believable.

It was, she admits, a shock to her system. ‘I’d just given birth and I was in this soft, warm, maternal state, and then all of a sudden I’m getting thrown on to the floor and kicked in the shins and going, “Hell, that hurt!” For the first few hours I was like, “What on earth am I doing here?” One minute I was sitting there with a loaded gun and the next I was going back to my trailer to breast-feed my baby. But you know what? I really enjoyed it. I was ramming cars without wearing seatbelts or a crash helmet, and I was running around being very physical. It was scary, thrilling – and when I came out I felt completely empowered.’

‘One minute I had a loaded gun; the next I was feeding my baby’

To her friends and all but her closest family, Valerie Plame was a housewife married to a former diplomat, Joe Wilson (played by Sean Penn), raising her children in suburban Washington. Then Wilson made a public claim that President George W Bush’s administration may have manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq. In retaliation his wife was exposed as a covert operative who had carried out dangerous missions all over the world – which in one stroke blew her cover, ended her 20-year career and put her life, and her family’s, in danger.

Naomi, 42, met Plame as part of her research and has nothing but admiration for her. ‘She’s an incredible woman and had to live this secret life. She wasn’t at liberty to tell her friends what she really did, then suddenly she was thrust into the public arena. But she handled it with such grace and dignity. As an actor, you take on other identities and hide your own, and in the same way Valerie had to constantly create new identities for her work. The big difference is that if I mess up I get panned by the critics. If she messed up, she could end up being shot!’

These days, though, Naomi’s number-one role is motherhood. She has been with her partner – actor and director Liev Schreiber – since 2005 (they haven’t married and have no plans to ‘at the moment’), and as well as Samuel, now two, they have a three-year-old son, Alexander. ‘I used to say that my decisions were all about choosing the right director and so on. Those things are still true, but now the most important questions are, “Where do we shoot? How long does it last?” Because I want to know how the work will fit into our lives as a family. When I work I’m completely committed. But when I’m not on a set, I’m absolutely the full-time mum. I know it’s a problem that working women the world over face, and many don’t have the great support that I do, so I’m not complaining. But priorities change, because children change everything.’

Naomi had to undergo intense training for her role as Valerie Plame in the upcoming spy movie Fair Game, which also stars Sean Penn

Naomi herself was born and raised in Shoreham, Kent. Her father Peter Watts (a sound engineer for Pink Floyd) separated from her mother Myfanwy, a Welsh-born antiques dealer and amateur actress, when Naomi was four and her brother Ben was five. Peter died at 30 from a suspected drugs overdose when Naomi was seven. ‘He lived the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and died young,’ she said later. ‘There was a lot of sadness in my life when I was a child but there was a lot of love, too. Mum had to struggle a lot to bring us up and I have enormous respect and admiration for her.’

She’s very close to her mother: ‘Because she was so young when she had me, we have grown up more like sisters. But our personalities are very different. As a child I used to die a thousand deaths when I was out with her because she was such an extrovert. From an early age I chose the opposite path, which probably explains why I always seem quite shy and reserved. Yet most of my female friends are like my mum – tough, opinionated and funny.’

When Naomi was 14, Myfanwy took her children to begin a new life in Australia, settling in Sydney. ‘It took time to feel like I fitted in. We’d travelled around a lot in the UK – at one point we lived with my grandparents in Wales – but this was a whole new culture.’ It was signing up for acting classes that helped, she says, and after a brief spell modelling (‘I didn’t have a great time and fortunately it didn’t last long’) she began to pick up TV roles, in the miniseries Brides of Christ and a few episodes of Home and Away. ‘It used to be that every time I came to England everyone would remember me for Home and Away rather than the more serious roles,’ she says. ‘But I don’t have regrets about that work. In Australia almost every actor does a soap at one time and there’s no point being precious about it. If you want to act then you go where the work is and learn from everything you do, whether it’s Home and Away or Chekhov.’

At 21 she landed a role in the coming-of-age drama Flirting, alongside two other young actresses destined to become stars: Nicole Kidman (whom Naomi had known since they were both teenagers) and Thandie Newton. ‘We all got along really well. Nic has been one of my closest friends – and biggest supporters – ever since. She’s fantastic.’

While Nicole’s career soared, Naomi at first struggled when she followed her to the US and there were times when she thought about giving up on the dream. ‘Oh God, yes, many times – actually, most of the time. But every time I thought, “I’m packing my bags and going back to Australia”, something would lure me back in.’

Everything changed when she was cast in a TV series called Mulholland Drive by cult director David Lynch, creator of the groundbreaking Twin Peaks. ‘They came to David and said, “You were the guy who changed television – let’s do another Twin Peaks.” He wrote this amazing script – and then they rejected it. It sat on a shelf for a year and a half before the French producers said, “OK, here’s some more money, let’s turn it into a film.”’

Even during filming, Naomi wasn’t sure whether it would work. Mulholland Drive is a surreal take on the pressures on young actresses in Hollywood. Naomi played Betty Elms, a naive young hopeful corrupted by the lure of fame. ‘It was so stylised that I felt like I was doing the worst performance ever to hit the screen. And David kept saying, “Keep going, punch it up even more...” I would be saying to myself, “How is this going to work?” Because you just don’t know what he’s up to. He doesn’t tell you, he doesn’t tell anyone. But the guy is brilliant and he knew what he was doing. And the result was just fantastic.’

Mulholland Drive premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews, and Naomi’s life changed overnight. ‘I suddenly had a career. I went from being an actor for hire to an actor that directors wanted to cast. I’ll be eternally grateful to David for the chance he gave me.’

Her number has been on the speed-dial button of the best directors in Hollywood ever since. She played a journalist investigating a mysterious video tape linked to unexplained deaths in horror movie The Ring, and delivered an Oscar-nominated performance as a grieving mother in 21 Grams, opposite Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro. She starred in Peter (Lord of the Rings) Jackson’s remake of King Kong, as the iconic blonde who ends up on top of the Empire State Building with the giant ape, and played a midwife threatened by the Russian mob in London in the gritty drama Eastern Promises.

She likes to mix it up, she says. ‘That’s the fun of it. You try on a different character, work in a new genre, team up with some great actors and keep yourself, and hopefully the audience, guessing.’ Included in her mix is a bittersweet Woody Allen comedy, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which will be released in the UK later this year. It’s familiar Allen fare – anxiety over relationships, infidelity and how to cope with life in contemporary London – and Naomi plays Sally, an Englishwoman married to a struggling novelist (Josh Brolin).

‘It’s a milestone to get to work with Woody,’ she says. ‘I grew up watching his films, falling in love with them. I was a little nervous going into it but he was everything I hoped he would be. People said to me that he doesn’t talk much and that he’s very shy, but I found him incredibly easy to hang out with. I stayed on set even when I wasn’t needed, because I didn’t want to miss a Woody moment. I really enjoyed playing an English character, and working in London was heaven. It’s got such a great buzz – it’s like New York in that way. We stayed in a friend’s house and I had the children with me and my mum was around all the time. Woody likes a short day and I was home before dark and got to have a family life as well. Perfect.'

‘But home is where your family is and, these days, that’s New York: those boys are growing up with American accents. Liev is a true New Yorker: he loves that city and I’ve really come to love it as well. We’ve also got a house by the beach on the East Coast and we get there when we can. When I’m not working, life’s all about being at home. I’m not joking – sleep is too precious! Having a social life, being a mum and working – well, something had to be knocked off the list. And social life was the first to go.

‘With work, we’ve tried to take it in turns,’ she continues. ‘If he’s working [last year Liev, 43, starred on Broadway opposite Scarlett Johansson in the Arthur Miller play A View From the Bridge, and in the spy movie Salt with Angelina Jolie], I’m at home with the kids, and vice versa. He’s a great father – very hands-on. But with children a lot of planning goes out of the window. It’s all about the moment, not about planning the next day or even the next hour.’

Naomi’s mother is now back in the UK, but her brother Ben is a successful photographer based in New York. ‘It’s great working with him because we grew up together and he knows the playful spirit in me and it frees me up. I don’t try to look sexy or pose: he just kind of captures me. He makes me laugh.’ She pauses and then giggles. ‘Actually, I stole his iPod the other day and it’s got everything on it – like 8,000 songs! Thanks, brother!’

Later this year she will tackle what could prove to be her toughest role yet, playing Marilyn Monroe in the biopic Blonde. ‘It’s a huge undertaking,’ she says, ‘because everyone has their own idea about who she was.’ But it’s a challenge that Naomi appreciates all the more because her success has come relatively late in life. ‘In a way, that’s a gift because it doesn’t change you into something else. I am who I am. I struggled for many years and then I was lucky enough to get some breaks. I’m the same girl I always was. I just got lucky.’

Fair Game will be released on 11 March

People:: Woody Allen,; Sean Penn,; Marilyn Monroe,; David Lynch,; Nicole Kidman,; Naomi Watts,; Valerie Plame,; Thandie Newton
Places:: Sydney,; London,; New York,; Washington,; Australia,; Wales,; Iraq,; United Kingdom
Organisations:: White House