Naomi Watts

Naomi Watts was born on September 28, 1968, in Shoreham, Kent, England, to Myfanwy Edwards, costume designer, and Peter Watts, sound engineer and road manager. After her parents divorced, she lived in England, then moved with her mother and brother Ben to Australia, where she attended Mosman High School in Sydney. Watts met Nicole Kidman at North Sydney Girls' High School, and both later appeared in the 1991 Australian comedy Flirting, directed by John Duigan together. Her screen work included Australian films For Love Alone and Gross Misconduct, the comic-book adaptation Tank Girl, and 1997 television series Sleepwalkers, made for NBC. David Lynch cast Watts as aspiring actress Betty Elms in Mulholland Drive, whose 2001 Cannes premiere brought her international recognition and major critical acclaim swiftly. The film transforms Betty's Hollywood dream into a darker identity puzzle involving Rita, a blue key, and Watts's Diane Selwyn in its final act. For 21 Grams, Watts played Cristina Peck, a grieving mother connected to a transplant recipient, earning her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in 2004. She received another Best Actress nomination for The Impossible, portraying Maria Bennett, whose ordeal follows Thailand's 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and family separation in 2012. In Peter Jackson's 2005 King Kong, she played Ann Darrow, vaudeville performer captured alongside the giant ape after Carl Denham's film expedition reaches Skull Island. Watts portrayed midwife Anna Khitrova in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, investigating the origins of a Russian infant left at her hospital in London's criminal underworld. Her performance as journalist Rachel Keller anchored Gore Verbinski's 2002 remake The Ring, in which a videotape foretells its viewers' deaths after seven days exactly. Later film roles included a CIA officer in Fair Game, a recovering mother in The Impossible, and Queen Gertrude in Ophelia with Daisy Ridley onscreen. On television, she played Babe Paley in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, set amid Truman Capote's betrayal of his circle of New York society women. She played therapist Jean Holloway in Netflix's Gypsy and Nora Brannock in The Watcher, both series released by Netflix in 2017 and 2022 respectively years. With producer and friend Liza Chasin, Watts founded Jam Tart Films, a company announced in 2023 to develop television and film projects for international audiences. She cofounded Stripes Beauty, a menopause-focused wellness company, and has served as a United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador since 2016 for global advocacy work.