[Article] Stand by your men

Onscreen and off, Naomi Watts knows all about devotion, writes Jenny Cooney Carrillo.

Oscar-nominated Naomi Watts has been one of Hollywood’s leading ladies ever since her breakthrough role in David Lynch’s 2001 drama, Mulholland Drive. So why did the Aussie A-lister accept such a small (albeit important) role in the new Clint Eastwood-directed drama, J. Edgar?

”The fact that it was small, yeah sure, it has its downside,” Watts says. ”But I just really wanted to work with Clint. He’s getting on [aged 81] and while he seems to have tons of energy and so much more to do, I still wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out on that opportunity.”

And what was Watt’s verdict? ”He was as good as I hoped he’d be, if not better.

”I was sort of in shock the first day, my head was spinning and I was thinking, ‘How am I going to work this fast?’ The first scene I shot, he didn’t even say ‘action’ and I thought it was a rehearsal but suddenly we’re cutting and moving on, so I didn’t have a chance to even be nervous.

”It took me a week and a half to work up the courage to ask for another take and when I did, he said, ‘Of course!”’

J. Edgar is seen through the eyes of controversial FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) during his five-decade stint running the bureau. Hoover became famous for using his knowledge to gain influence, keeping secret files on politicians, celebrities and anyone he suspected was subversive. Watts plays his faithful secretary, Helen Gandy. ”There is that great cliche, ‘Behind every great man there’s a great woman,’ and I love the way she devoted herself to him,” Watts says.

”But as time progressed, she also became a woman in her own right and a powerful person who protected him, no matter what.”

Watts first sits down with S at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Los Angeles during a press junket for the film. She’s wearing a simple cream linen dress by Roland Mouret, her blonde locks curled to one side. At the film’s premiere that night, she wows photographers in a cream, sequinned Stella McCartney dress slit up to the thigh with a plunging neckline as she poses with her long-time partner, actor Liev Schreiber.

But life isn’t all sequins and the next time we talk it begins with a call from a Whole Foods Market to apologise for being late, and to plead for an extra 20 minutes before we chat so she can ”get in a grocery shop before picking up Sasha from school”.

Watts and Schreiber have two sons: Sasha (the Russian diminutive of his real name, Alexander), 4, and Samuel Kai, 3.

”It’s pretty much non-stop with two boys,” she says when she finally calls back, dog barking in the background. ”There is lots of rough-housing with daddy and head-butting and tears. I try and bail out by using the expression I borrowed from a friend, ‘Careful, mummy is a delicate flower,’ but that’s a joke because I’ve never been a delicate flower in my life!”

At 43, Watts has put together an impressive resume´ thanks to films such as King Kong, 21 Grams – which earned her an Oscar nomination – Eastern Promises, The Painted Veil and The Ring. But more important to the down-to-earth actor is making her career work around her family.

”Liev and I try to take turns and it’s actually worked so far, because we’ve probably only overlapped by a couple of weeks once or twice,” she says. ”Our family is the most important thing and luckily our children are still young and at the age where so what if they miss a bit of preschool, because the learning is actually on the road.

”We were in Thailand recently for six months,” she adds, referring to her coming tsunami drama The Impossible, ”and they got to ride on elephants and found frogs and snakes in their shoes, so they’re having all these adventures they’ll never forget.”

Born in England, Watts moved to Australia when she was 11 years old with her mother and her brother, Ben, now a photographer.

She met Nicole Kidman at her first audition when she was 15. They’ve remained close friends through all their well-documented highs and lows and now they share motherhood in their 40s as Kidman has a second family (with Keith Urban).

”Nicole was in New York for some time over Christmas,” Watts says, adding: ”We’re both in the spirit of the same things at the same time right now, so it’s really special.”

Watts is excited about finally returning to Australia this month to start shooting the drama The Grandmothers, directed by Anne Fontaine (Coco avant Chanel), in which she and Robin Wright play childhood friends and single parents who begin affairs with each other’s sons, played by Animal Kingdom’s James Frecheville and Xavier Samuel from Twilight. ”It’s a bit controversial,” she says with a naughty chuckle, ”but I like that stuff!”

- Sydney Morning Herald