[Article] 'Fair Game' star Naomi Watts really knows her character, Valerie Plame

The Oscar-nominated actress and the former spy got together before shooting began and have kept up a rapport.

By Scott Kraft, Los Angeles Times
October 24, 2010

Reporting from New York — To tell the big-screen tale of Valerie Plame, a real-life CIA spy whose covert identity was blown by the White House, director Doug Liman needed a special kind of actress: someone who could build an emotional wall around herself and still convey "a sense that there's a good person inside her."

He was convinced that that actress was Naomi Watts. But after a pre-shoot with Watts and costar Sean Penn last year, Liman called his producer in a panic. "We've got to toughen Naomi up, a.s.a.p.," he told Janet Zucker, "and we don't have much time."

He wasn't sure it was even possible. Plame had been a CIA operative who spent 17 years living a life of secrecy and deception. Watts was, by contrast, a movie star who walked red carpets, was trailed by an adoring entourage and, on top of it all, was breastfeeding a new baby. "She was a little soft," Liman said.

*Read the [full story] here.