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Naomi Watts
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according to imdb.com http://imdb.com/name/nm0915208/bio
naomi is 5'5
naomi is 5'5
I'm not sure if these have been posted before, but she looks absolutely beautiful here:
www.outnow.ch
www.outnow.ch
MissMagAddict
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From Telegraph UK
Watts the story
(Filed: 11/12/2005)
Aside from a 25ft gorilla, Naomi Watts, who stars in King Kong, is going to be the biggest thing in Hollywood this Christmas. It’s a dream come true for the actress formerly known as ‘Nicole Kidman’s best friend’. But has she really found what she was looking for? Tim Willis meets her
Sat in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in lower Manhattan, the actress Naomi Watts is chiding me for asking personal questions.
Both Watts and her character Ann Darrow have rackety pasts'My job is to make you believe the stories of all those people I play,' she says. 'If there's too much personal stuff about me out there, I can't take you on that journey. So - quite apart from what all the press intrusion does to your head - it's a matter of professional survival.'
It's a lucid critique of a modern obsession, if, I suggest, just a little self-important. 'Well, we're not saving lives here,' she counters, 'but there does seem to be a human need for stories, and for people to enact them. Of course, if we're just going for fame and fortune, we're nothing more than whores and thieves - or is it thieves and whores?'
One thing's for certain: Naomi Watts, who plays Ann Darrow in Peter Jackson's re-make of King Kong out this Christmas, is neither of those things.
She's worked hard - and with an unusual degree of integrity - for everything she's got and now, aged 37, after two decades' slog, she's a bona fide A-list Hollywood star.
Indeed King Kong will make her one of the world's best-known faces, multiplying rewards that have already started rolling in.
Following critical acclaim for her performances in Mulholland Drive (2001) and 21 Grams (2003) and the commercial success of The Ring (2002), in which she played a ghost-busting journalist, she has acquired homes in Sydney, New York and Los Angeles. And if it once looked like this British-born, Australian-bred blonde would always stay in the shadow of her best friend Nicole Kidman, well, now they share the limelight.
She met Kidman as a teenager - at a model casting in Sydney - and Watts credits her friend with stiffening her resolve through the lean years (playing a paraplegic in Home and Away, for example).
When Watts got to Hollywood - and Children of the Corn IV - Kidman even lent her party frocks. But recently there has been gossip that the junior partner has progressed too much for Nicole's comfort, leading to a certain froideur.
'That's nonsense,' retorts Watts, in an accent that betrays all her places of residence. 'I had dinner with her last night.'
Sharing the limelight: Watts is Nicole Kidman's best friendWatts, 5ft 5in and with a no-nonsense air about her, wears a long-sleeved, navy-blue pleated silk Marni frock - which points up the paleness of her bare legs - with flip-flops from the same label.
She looks cool, but comes across as approachable, fiddling with the wooden beads on her right wrist and the dainty gold cross and chain at her throat and falling on the latest edition of Empire magazine, giggling fondly at pictures of herself.
Watts doesn't pretend to be an intellectual but neither is she a dolt. And she's deeply aware of the shortcomings of fame. On both the personal and professional fronts she admits she has problems, and that they impact on each other.
For example, the odds of having a family are shortening all the time: she's had flings with a couple of actors - she and Heath Ledger split up last year - but she says no husband material has yet emerged. 'I seem to attract jerks,' she once remarked. (Quite what her current boyfriend, the actor and director Liev Schreiber - The Manchurian Candidate, Everything Is Illuminated - makes of all this is anyone's guess.)
But say she does decide to have a baby, husband or no husband? Then she has to take a year or two's maternity leave just when her stock is at its highest - just when she needs to consolidate her status or face a future of fighting for the few big parts available to women in their forties.
In such a quandary, it takes some bottle to narrow your options. But here's Watts ruling out any more action films: 'I'm small and skinny, and it's hard on the body. For six months it's pushing, pulling, chasing - being beaten up by fully grown men - and I'm not built for it.'
None the less, to judge by a six-minute preview reel of King Kong - which is all I'm shown - she was made to play King Kong's heroine and love interest. Both Ann Darrow and Watts have lived hand-to-mouth, desperate for a decent part; both have rackety pasts.
In Watts's case, her father Peter was a sound engineer for Pink Floyd. Joining them at their druggiest, he stayed with the band until they went platinum with such albums as Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. (And you can hear him chuckling on both.)
However, rock 'n' roll got the better of Pete. He left Watts's mother Miv in 1972, was sacked by the Floyd three years later and died of a heroin overdose soon after that.
Watts and her elder brother Ben (a photographer) grew up in Shoreham in Kent. Their mother was heavily involved with the local am-dram society, and seeing her in My Fair Lady 'inspired me', says Watts.
When Miv decided to emigrate to Australia in 1982, one of the sweeteners she offered Watts was the promise of drama lessons. The 14-year-old's head was full of the film Fame - 'leg-warmers and dancing on the desks' - while her mother's house in Sydney was full of transients.
'She doesn't like it when I say she was a hippie,' Watts laughs. 'And it wasn't a commune - but put it this way, there was a general lack of underwear.' Her mother baked her own bread and made her own clothes. 'She was always creative,' says Watts, and Miv soon found work in Australia as an interior decorator (a trade she pursues today in East Anglia).
She had also found a new husband by the time Watts was ten, 'although I never thought of him as my father,' says the actress. Indeed, she still claims to believe that Pete is 'up there, looking after me' or 'maybe steering me'.
So perhaps her troubles with men stem from that lack of a corporeal male role model? 'Look,' she says sternly, 'you have issues. Obviously they affect you and stay with you. But you hope to move on, and you do. Now, can we talk about the film?'
Very well. While Watts was still in nappies in Kent, in New Zealand, nine-year-old Peter Jackson saw the Fay Wray King Kong for the first time. The next morning he borrowed the family cine camera. Painting the Manhattan skyline on a sheet, and fashioning a monster from coat hangers and his mother's possum coat, he began shooting.
He didn't get far, but in 1996 he returned to the idea and began developing a treatment with Universal Pictures. Although at first the studio was dubious, after Jackson's $3-billion-grossing, 17-Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, it came back with the biggest offer ever made to a director: a $20 million advance on 20 per cent of the box office.
'You have issues. Obviously they affect you but you move on'You wonder how high Universal would have gone if he hadn't liked the idea. However, says Watts, 'When you hear his passion for this movie, you realise it's his calling.' She had reservations at first. 'But after meeting Peter, I thought, "If there's that much passion going on, I want to be a part of it."'
The atmosphere certainly seems to have been feverish: 'They would still be writing new pages on the day of filming, and I'd never worked like that before. You know, we're trained to "honour the text", so some actors can really freak out, because they need to understand why their character is saying a line.'
Surely not so important in a story that - whatever its mythical, topical or even Freudian connotations - is ultimately daft? Watts bridles. 'It's all about acting,' she says. And not just 'homages', which she pronounces in the French way, to Fay Wray - 'though I did try to tap into her voice.'
'People,' she continues, 'ask why I'm doing this. They call it a monster movie. They say, "You do pieces about real emotions, about real people." But to me, this is as much about a relationship as an event. It's about love - not in the sexual sense, although there are times when it gets quite sensual - but about protective love. I guess the message is that we can't exist alone.'
Hmm. Although the 1933 film shows some sympathy with Kong, after the ape has been shot up by biplanes, the last words are given to Darrow's director: 'Beauty has killed the beast.'
But, says Watts, 'that isn't right, because the beast of man kills the beauty of nature. So it's more, like, greed destroys human beings.' And in keeping with this right-on approach, she reveals, that the pro-Kong factor 'has been pumped up even more'.
Which prompts an obvious question. How does she summon the muse when her leading man - standing 25ft from knuckles to crown - is created by computer-generated special effects? The answer lies with British actor Andy Serkis and his skill as a 'motion capture' actor, a role he last performed for Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.
After months of studying primates Serkis was put into a sort of electronic suit that recorded his movements, these providing the template for the digital Kong.
And helpfully for Watts, he was on set for every scene that Darrow shares with the King: 'He was usually up on a rig, to get the eye-line right, but he'd be doing all the chest-beating and grunting - so I had someone to react to.'
The idea, she says, had seemed 'absurd until I met Andy, and he took away all my fear. He's a wonderful actor, and a wonderful human being.'
Oh, luvvie, please. Can't we discuss her complexes again? Has she seen a shrink about them? She has the grace to laugh.
'I'm not trying to be rude,' she says, 'but I have to protect my privacy.' And then, unexpectedly: 'You know, talking of Dad, I do think the experience instilled a survival instinct in me - maybe too much of one - but I'm going to take it easier now.'
And you can't help feeling that it would be rather good for her now she's made it: to stop looking over her shoulder and worrying about what's over the hill; to start a family; to choose parts for their worth and not mind if she was passed over.
The sun would be in his heaven, and everything right in her world.
Watts the story
(Filed: 11/12/2005)
Aside from a 25ft gorilla, Naomi Watts, who stars in King Kong, is going to be the biggest thing in Hollywood this Christmas. It’s a dream come true for the actress formerly known as ‘Nicole Kidman’s best friend’. But has she really found what she was looking for? Tim Willis meets her
Sat in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in lower Manhattan, the actress Naomi Watts is chiding me for asking personal questions.
It's a lucid critique of a modern obsession, if, I suggest, just a little self-important. 'Well, we're not saving lives here,' she counters, 'but there does seem to be a human need for stories, and for people to enact them. Of course, if we're just going for fame and fortune, we're nothing more than whores and thieves - or is it thieves and whores?'
One thing's for certain: Naomi Watts, who plays Ann Darrow in Peter Jackson's re-make of King Kong out this Christmas, is neither of those things.
She's worked hard - and with an unusual degree of integrity - for everything she's got and now, aged 37, after two decades' slog, she's a bona fide A-list Hollywood star.
Indeed King Kong will make her one of the world's best-known faces, multiplying rewards that have already started rolling in.
Following critical acclaim for her performances in Mulholland Drive (2001) and 21 Grams (2003) and the commercial success of The Ring (2002), in which she played a ghost-busting journalist, she has acquired homes in Sydney, New York and Los Angeles. And if it once looked like this British-born, Australian-bred blonde would always stay in the shadow of her best friend Nicole Kidman, well, now they share the limelight.
She met Kidman as a teenager - at a model casting in Sydney - and Watts credits her friend with stiffening her resolve through the lean years (playing a paraplegic in Home and Away, for example).
When Watts got to Hollywood - and Children of the Corn IV - Kidman even lent her party frocks. But recently there has been gossip that the junior partner has progressed too much for Nicole's comfort, leading to a certain froideur.
'That's nonsense,' retorts Watts, in an accent that betrays all her places of residence. 'I had dinner with her last night.'
She looks cool, but comes across as approachable, fiddling with the wooden beads on her right wrist and the dainty gold cross and chain at her throat and falling on the latest edition of Empire magazine, giggling fondly at pictures of herself.
Watts doesn't pretend to be an intellectual but neither is she a dolt. And she's deeply aware of the shortcomings of fame. On both the personal and professional fronts she admits she has problems, and that they impact on each other.
For example, the odds of having a family are shortening all the time: she's had flings with a couple of actors - she and Heath Ledger split up last year - but she says no husband material has yet emerged. 'I seem to attract jerks,' she once remarked. (Quite what her current boyfriend, the actor and director Liev Schreiber - The Manchurian Candidate, Everything Is Illuminated - makes of all this is anyone's guess.)
But say she does decide to have a baby, husband or no husband? Then she has to take a year or two's maternity leave just when her stock is at its highest - just when she needs to consolidate her status or face a future of fighting for the few big parts available to women in their forties.
In such a quandary, it takes some bottle to narrow your options. But here's Watts ruling out any more action films: 'I'm small and skinny, and it's hard on the body. For six months it's pushing, pulling, chasing - being beaten up by fully grown men - and I'm not built for it.'
None the less, to judge by a six-minute preview reel of King Kong - which is all I'm shown - she was made to play King Kong's heroine and love interest. Both Ann Darrow and Watts have lived hand-to-mouth, desperate for a decent part; both have rackety pasts.
In Watts's case, her father Peter was a sound engineer for Pink Floyd. Joining them at their druggiest, he stayed with the band until they went platinum with such albums as Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. (And you can hear him chuckling on both.)
However, rock 'n' roll got the better of Pete. He left Watts's mother Miv in 1972, was sacked by the Floyd three years later and died of a heroin overdose soon after that.
Watts and her elder brother Ben (a photographer) grew up in Shoreham in Kent. Their mother was heavily involved with the local am-dram society, and seeing her in My Fair Lady 'inspired me', says Watts.
When Miv decided to emigrate to Australia in 1982, one of the sweeteners she offered Watts was the promise of drama lessons. The 14-year-old's head was full of the film Fame - 'leg-warmers and dancing on the desks' - while her mother's house in Sydney was full of transients.
'She doesn't like it when I say she was a hippie,' Watts laughs. 'And it wasn't a commune - but put it this way, there was a general lack of underwear.' Her mother baked her own bread and made her own clothes. 'She was always creative,' says Watts, and Miv soon found work in Australia as an interior decorator (a trade she pursues today in East Anglia).
She had also found a new husband by the time Watts was ten, 'although I never thought of him as my father,' says the actress. Indeed, she still claims to believe that Pete is 'up there, looking after me' or 'maybe steering me'.
So perhaps her troubles with men stem from that lack of a corporeal male role model? 'Look,' she says sternly, 'you have issues. Obviously they affect you and stay with you. But you hope to move on, and you do. Now, can we talk about the film?'
Very well. While Watts was still in nappies in Kent, in New Zealand, nine-year-old Peter Jackson saw the Fay Wray King Kong for the first time. The next morning he borrowed the family cine camera. Painting the Manhattan skyline on a sheet, and fashioning a monster from coat hangers and his mother's possum coat, he began shooting.
He didn't get far, but in 1996 he returned to the idea and began developing a treatment with Universal Pictures. Although at first the studio was dubious, after Jackson's $3-billion-grossing, 17-Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, it came back with the biggest offer ever made to a director: a $20 million advance on 20 per cent of the box office.
The atmosphere certainly seems to have been feverish: 'They would still be writing new pages on the day of filming, and I'd never worked like that before. You know, we're trained to "honour the text", so some actors can really freak out, because they need to understand why their character is saying a line.'
Surely not so important in a story that - whatever its mythical, topical or even Freudian connotations - is ultimately daft? Watts bridles. 'It's all about acting,' she says. And not just 'homages', which she pronounces in the French way, to Fay Wray - 'though I did try to tap into her voice.'
'People,' she continues, 'ask why I'm doing this. They call it a monster movie. They say, "You do pieces about real emotions, about real people." But to me, this is as much about a relationship as an event. It's about love - not in the sexual sense, although there are times when it gets quite sensual - but about protective love. I guess the message is that we can't exist alone.'
Hmm. Although the 1933 film shows some sympathy with Kong, after the ape has been shot up by biplanes, the last words are given to Darrow's director: 'Beauty has killed the beast.'
But, says Watts, 'that isn't right, because the beast of man kills the beauty of nature. So it's more, like, greed destroys human beings.' And in keeping with this right-on approach, she reveals, that the pro-Kong factor 'has been pumped up even more'.
Which prompts an obvious question. How does she summon the muse when her leading man - standing 25ft from knuckles to crown - is created by computer-generated special effects? The answer lies with British actor Andy Serkis and his skill as a 'motion capture' actor, a role he last performed for Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.
After months of studying primates Serkis was put into a sort of electronic suit that recorded his movements, these providing the template for the digital Kong.
And helpfully for Watts, he was on set for every scene that Darrow shares with the King: 'He was usually up on a rig, to get the eye-line right, but he'd be doing all the chest-beating and grunting - so I had someone to react to.'
The idea, she says, had seemed 'absurd until I met Andy, and he took away all my fear. He's a wonderful actor, and a wonderful human being.'
Oh, luvvie, please. Can't we discuss her complexes again? Has she seen a shrink about them? She has the grace to laugh.
'I'm not trying to be rude,' she says, 'but I have to protect my privacy.' And then, unexpectedly: 'You know, talking of Dad, I do think the experience instilled a survival instinct in me - maybe too much of one - but I'm going to take it easier now.'
And you can't help feeling that it would be rather good for her now she's made it: to stop looking over her shoulder and worrying about what's over the hill; to start a family; to choose parts for their worth and not mind if she was passed over.
The sun would be in his heaven, and everything right in her world.
vikingqueen
Away From Here
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thanks for the article
i like telegraph articles, they don't sugercoat their interviews or suck up to the stars....
i like telegraph articles, they don't sugercoat their interviews or suck up to the stars....
F
fashionologie
Guest
Naomi Watts on playing Kong's girl
"I think deep down we both knew that there wasn't a forever plan," King Kong star Naomi Watts tells Vanity Fair of her relationship with actor Heath Ledger. "It was not an easy breakup but, you know, a bearable one. ... It's sad saying good-bye to someone that you care for, but we always knew that it was in sight, so it was the inevitable that happened." Today, Watts, who is 37, and Ledger, who is 11 years her junior, remain friends, and she has even met his fiance, actress Michelle Williams. (Watts's interview--along with stunning photos by Norman Jean Roy--appear in the January issue of Vanity Fair, on New York and L.A. newsstands December 7, and appearing nationally December 13.)
Watts tells Smith she is smitten with her new love, actor Liev Schreiber, and friends of the actress think an engagement might be around the corner. "He's just a solid guy," Watts says of Schreiber. "And he's complex, which I love. And has a brilliant mind, which I am totally in awe of. And he's incredibly funny—you just have to laugh. For some people that's not such an important thing, but I need that. We understand each other very well and we're at very similar places in our lives."
Watts says she is rarely noticed in public. "I just smile. And keep walking. If I were decked out in my stilettos, hair and makeup ready every day, then I might draw a little more attention to myself."
That may all change soon, as Watts anticipates the opening of Peter Jackson's King Kong. "All this stuff"—the global rollout, the raised expectations, the impossibility of privacy—"is still unknown to me. I'm less familiar with it, and it's kind of frightening."
Watts's longtime friend Nicole Kidman thinks Watts is prepared for what's to come. "I think it is going to be a whole different life for her in terms of everything she has ever wanted. And I think she is more than ready for it."
Watts almost gave up on acting altogether, she tells Smith, after 10 years in Hollywood and few roles. "I had gotten to a place where I truly believed everything I was called: 'not sexy,' 'not funny,' 'too intense,' 'desperate,'" Watts says. "All those labels they gave me, I took them because there wasn't a trace of my true self left." The last blow came from her agent at the time, who, Watts recalls, said, "'What's happened? I keep talking with casting directors. I know you are a good actress, they know you are, but you are freaking them out.' I just sat there and sobbed and sobbed my heart out."
Watts credits her mother with instilling in her a survival instinct that made it possible for her to stay in Hollywood. "My mother is a survivior," Watts tells Smith. "That is what I've been living on. That survival mechanism has been driving me," she says.
Of the sudden death of her father when she was just seven years old, Watts tells Smith, "I try not to talk about it too much. It's upsetting and very personal." And she adds that the most upsetting aspect is that "I feel robbed of the experiences that I was entitled to." She tells Smith, though, that she feels that her dad has been looking after her every step of the way.
Watts tells Smith that she feels as if everything in her life is coming together. "I feel like I am entering into a stage where this whole journey of struggle had perfect meaning," she says. "It's all in the process of taking care of itself."
source: http://justjared.blogspot.com/2005/1...nity-fair.html
Watts tells Smith she is smitten with her new love, actor Liev Schreiber, and friends of the actress think an engagement might be around the corner. "He's just a solid guy," Watts says of Schreiber. "And he's complex, which I love. And has a brilliant mind, which I am totally in awe of. And he's incredibly funny—you just have to laugh. For some people that's not such an important thing, but I need that. We understand each other very well and we're at very similar places in our lives."
Watts says she is rarely noticed in public. "I just smile. And keep walking. If I were decked out in my stilettos, hair and makeup ready every day, then I might draw a little more attention to myself."
That may all change soon, as Watts anticipates the opening of Peter Jackson's King Kong. "All this stuff"—the global rollout, the raised expectations, the impossibility of privacy—"is still unknown to me. I'm less familiar with it, and it's kind of frightening."
Watts's longtime friend Nicole Kidman thinks Watts is prepared for what's to come. "I think it is going to be a whole different life for her in terms of everything she has ever wanted. And I think she is more than ready for it."
Watts almost gave up on acting altogether, she tells Smith, after 10 years in Hollywood and few roles. "I had gotten to a place where I truly believed everything I was called: 'not sexy,' 'not funny,' 'too intense,' 'desperate,'" Watts says. "All those labels they gave me, I took them because there wasn't a trace of my true self left." The last blow came from her agent at the time, who, Watts recalls, said, "'What's happened? I keep talking with casting directors. I know you are a good actress, they know you are, but you are freaking them out.' I just sat there and sobbed and sobbed my heart out."
Watts credits her mother with instilling in her a survival instinct that made it possible for her to stay in Hollywood. "My mother is a survivior," Watts tells Smith. "That is what I've been living on. That survival mechanism has been driving me," she says.
Of the sudden death of her father when she was just seven years old, Watts tells Smith, "I try not to talk about it too much. It's upsetting and very personal." And she adds that the most upsetting aspect is that "I feel robbed of the experiences that I was entitled to." She tells Smith, though, that she feels that her dad has been looking after her every step of the way.
Watts tells Smith that she feels as if everything in her life is coming together. "I feel like I am entering into a stage where this whole journey of struggle had perfect meaning," she says. "It's all in the process of taking care of itself."
source: http://justjared.blogspot.com/2005/1...nity-fair.html
brokenenglish
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I can't believe she is 37.
oolie coco
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And remember she dated Heath Ledger.... who's like.... young. hahahah
I mean, good for her, and all, but wow!
I mean, good for her, and all, but wow!
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