OF the Greatest of Leading Ladies, DIDN't THAT Prefers Superheroes
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HOLLYWOODNAOMI WATTS, ONE OF the greatest of leading ladies, DIDN’T HER MAKE IT BIG UNTIL WASHE WAS 33. NOW Y THAT SHE AND PARTNER LIEV SCHREIBER ARE SPENDING MORE TIME IN L.A., SHE’S STRUGGLING TO NEGOTIATE A TOWN THAT prefers superheroes to actors. By TAFFY BRODESSERAKNER Photographs by VICTOR DEMARCHELIER ALL THAT GLITTERS Naomi Watts in the Beverly Hills home of Tony Duquette (see page ). Céline jacket ($, ); Bulgari bracelet (price on request). A silky serum illuminates and improves skin texture: SK-II Cellumination AuraBright. Styled by Nicoletta Santoro SEPTEMBER | Back in , when Lynch oered Watts the role, no one was clamoring to drape her in bling. In fact, she was feeling pretty defeated, and even aer all the success she has had since, those days of struggle still haunt her. She first visited L.A. in , when her good iend Nicole Kidman, with whom she had worked in Australian films, was finding success. (Kidman had just finished Days of under, the movie that launched her career here.) Watts met with agents and managers and casting directors, all of them encouraging. “Come back!” they said. “We’ll have work for you.” Watts went home to Sydney, packed up, and returned, optimis- tic about her chances, only to find rejection at every turn. “It was excruciating,” she says now. “I had a cruel shock of, ‘Wow, this isn’t going to be like I thought it would be.’ As someone who works om the gut and was sure I was in touch with it… Let’s just say I was way o.” e worst part, though, was the post-audition feed- back. She wasn’t sexy enough. She was way too intense. “And I believed everything they said about me—negative, horrible stu.” HEN, AT THE TURN She admits that auditions are not easy for her. “I’m an anxious of this century, Naomi Watts was finally plucked om obscu- person, and I hate being put in a position where I’m being tested. rity by the director David Lynch—an excruciating obscurity If I feel safe, I can be me, but if I don’t feel safe, I try to please. I that had included years of bit parts in bit movies such as think, ‘is part is for a sexy girl, so I’m going to be really sexy!’ ” Tank Girl and Children of the Corn IV—fate was working in a Watts laughs and reaches to the sky, shaking her fists. “And it was mysterious way. e role he was casting was the female lead in like, it’s not working!” a television pilot, so he had been given a selection of headshots In short, L.A. does of people who could do a good job on TV—in other words, the not hold a lot of happy sort of actress not famous enough to anchor (or sell) a feature “I’M AN anxious memories for Watts. Wfilm. Back then, of course, movie stars didn’t do TV. person, AND I One of the necklaces He cast the show with unknowns (including a young upstart she’s wearing has a named Justin eroux), but that TV pilot ended up being the HATE BEING PUT charm with a map feature film Mulholland Drive, a movie that came to define of lower Manhattan, Lynch for a new generation of filmgoer, that grew to epitomize IN A POSITION where Watts, Schreiber, the seamier side of modern Los Angeles, and that introduced where I’m being and their kids mostly the world—finally, finally—to the -year-old Watts. lived for nine years. But e movie’s success was contingent on Watts’s dely playing tested,” WATTS they rarely spend time Betty Elms, a wide-eyed gee-whiz of a character, newly arrived SAYS. “IF I FEEL there now; Schreiber’s in L.A. and determined to make it as an actress. Watts overplays Showtime series, Ray the role until the moment she’s in an audition, when she suddenly SAFE, I CAN BE ME, Donovan, is shot in L.A., pulls out this other persona, that of a brilliant actress. It’s a disori- and aer the summer enting head fake, and the least of what’s to come. Soon enough BUT IF I DON’T the family will primar- Watts is embodying an entirely new character, Diane Selwyn. FEEL SAFE, I ily reside on the West Call it an introduction to the spectrum of an actress who, aer Coast. It’s been a tough acing this very complicated double role, was suddenly a star. try to please.” sell for Watts. “I find it I recently met Watts at a restaurant in Brentwood, a comfy easier to be anonymous local spot close to the house she shares with her partner Liev in New York. ey take Schreiber and their two sons, Sasha and Kai. (Schreiber had, your picture and then they go,” she says of the paparazzi. “And unbeknownst to her, been feeding pancakes to their nicely you can lose them pretty easily, by taking the subway or getting behaved boys at the restaurant before she arrived.) If it is possible into a taxi or simply going into your building.” In L.A., she says, to radiate the opposite of star energy, Watts does. She slips into they don’t leave you alone. the place—quiet, demure, her face bare—wearing a summery But her discomfort goes beyond the buzzing, incessant pho- black and white Isabel Marant dress and carrying a pink Louis tographers. Recently she went into the Beverly Hills outpost Vuitton bag with her initials on a tag around the straps. Her jew- of Barneys to get a present for a iend’s ¦th birthday. e elry is striking and delicate: a ring om other shoppers were in heels and full makeup. “I wore jeans and Jennifer Meyer, two necklace charms A GILDED CAGE flip-flops and, you know, wet hair—just regular, like I am now. om Jennifer Fisher, a Cartier watch, Strap yourself In New York no one would have looked twice. Here I felt as if and a bracelet om Bulgari, with whom in with metallics. people were staring at me because they knew who I was and I she has “a relationship”; she loves the Prada dress ($, ); was such a disappointment.” Harry Winston brand, and it, in turn, occasionally pro- bracelets and rings Watts puts her hands to her face and pulls the skin vides her with red carpet sparkle. (prices on request). back, indicating why they were disappointed, inadvertently | TOWNAN DCOUN TRYMAG.COM S EPTEMBER | parodying many of the women surrounding us in the restau- always “honest and raw,” in films and life. “at’s why Nai and rant. She is lovely but, minus red carpet glamorizing, looks I have been iends for years,” says the actress, who spent her age, albeit the very best ¨¦ can be, which we all know is a Mother’s Day with Watts and their respective kids. liability in this business. Of surgeries and injections she says, Edward Norton equently hosts the Watts-Schreiber brood “I’m really just feeling my way. is being an industry town, at his Malibu home; he worked with Watts for the first time that self-consciousness just pervades. ere are days when I feel in the upcoming Birdman, also directed by Iñárritu. He likens victorious that I have, you know, gotten this far,” she says of her the experience to playing sports with a natural athlete. “Naomi decision not to partake of the nip and tuck buet. “But there moves easily into any game and makes it seem eortless,” Nor- are a million days when I look in the mirror and think, ‘I’m ton says. “Whatever the nature of the material, she seems to going to do it, I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it. I can’t live have very natural instincts, and she just slides into the scene and with this anymore.’ ” gets on with it. And what she delivers is always true and good.” e advantages of L.A. are, for now, entirely children- ere are objective indications that Watts is doing something related. Like having a big back yard and a pool for Sasha and right: two Oscar nominations, for Grams and the disas- Kai. Recently Watts took up gardening, something she couldn’t ter film e Impossible. do in Manhattan. “You know you’re at that age when you want e latter was based to spend $, on gardening supplies instead of a dress,” she on the true story of a says with a laugh. “IF ONLY I’D couple and their two KNOWN BACK children who survived a AV ID LYNC H LIKES TO S AY TH AT HE tsunami. It is as harrow- has never regretted anyone he has cast, but THENOVER ing to watch as it was he tells me, “I have really never been happier to make—“the hardest that I picked someone than with Naomi.” He THOSE 10 YEARS role I’ve ever done,” she attributes much of Mulholland Drive’s cult suc- of trying to says, in part because cessD and longevity to her performance. When he met with it was so physically her about the part, he was struck by her self-eacement and prove myself grueling and “in part humility, which he considers very Australian. “ey don’t have WHAT I KNOW because it was a real this kind of star ego thing,” he says. “ey’re very regular, very thing we were reliving.” real, honest, kind of straightforward people, and it’s very pleas- NOW, WHICH IS Yet despite the critical ant.” But Watts, who was born and raised in England and didn’t .