Naomi Watts gracing the covers & contents of 6 international magazines

* all our images are water-marking-free

From left: Gioia (Italy) Sep 14, 2013, TVMAX (Czech Republic) Sep 13, 2013, Weekend (Greece) Aug 24, 2013, Stylist (UK) Sep 18, 2013, Sunday Style (Australia) Sep 13, 2013, Hello (Canada) Sep 23, 2013.


[The Sunday Style Article]

Naomi watts lights up the room – and has amped up her star power with her new film, Diana, discovers Hannah Rand

There are few actors of today who can command the level of respect surrounding Naomi Watts. Her talent and composure have made her something of a Hollywood legend in the realm of veteran actresses like Meryl Streep or Jodie Foster, despite her relatively young age. So it comes as a shock that in the middle of telling me about her latest film, the highly anticipated biopic Diana, she jumps up and mimics pulling a wedgie out of her smart, black Thakoon jumpsuit.

Then, just to drive home the point, she sticks a finger up her nose. Watts is trying to demonstrate what it’s like living in the limelight; to be hounded by the paparazzi. “You know, you just know, that when someone takes 1000 shots of you, it’s guaranteed that 999 of those will be horrible! And those are the ones they will print,” Watts, 44, says.......

“I mean, no comparison can be drawn between my life and Diana’s – but I’ve had my days where I’ve been beyond frustrated by the paparazzi guys following us around,” she adds. “Airports are challenging, as are the swimsuit shots. They use their cameras like a weapon; shoving them in your face because they know you’ll get upset, so their shot will become more valuable.”

As with the Princess of Wales, the actress fiercely protects her two young sons from unwanted attention. Watts and her partner, actor Liev Schreiber, 45, live in the hip Tribeca area of downtown New York City. Despite the threat of the dreaded bikini shot – and her relentless work schedule – Watts and her sons, Sasha, six, and Sammy, four, have been on holiday this year: to Morocco and the south of France to visit her mother, and then to their beach house in Amagansett, a few quiet country miles from the ultra-exclusive Hamptons area of Long Island.

The time off has been welcome because, just as soon as the excitement of Watts’s highly regarded Oscar-nominated role in The Impossible (as Maria Belon, the real-life Spanish mother who survived the horrific 2004 Boxing Day tsunami) cooled down, things heated up again for Diana. The movie centres around Diana’s last two years and secret love affair with Pakistani heart surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan, who is played by Naveen Andrews – best known for his role in the hit TV show Lost. It’s a beautifully crafted film, masterfully directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, who was Oscar-nominated for Downfall, the film documenting Hitler’s last days. Diana sidesteps the more notorious aspects of her life by focusing on a relatively unknown story.

Between 1995 and 1997, Diana and Khan, a man she called “Mr Wonderful” and who friends said was the greatest love of her life, managed to have a wildly romantic relationship and, amazingly, keep it from the press. From interviews with people close to Diana, the screenwriters knew the measures she had to take to keep the relationship private – including putting on a brown wig so they could meet out in public.

Personal friends of the princess told Watts that Diana ended the relationship with Haznat when he refused to marry her and that she had an affair with Dodi Al Fayed to make him jealous. It’s a sad story because she clearly loved Haznat, excitedly phoning a pal to say that “she’d finally found ‘the one’”, says Watts. “That’s the tragedy of the whole thing. That, post-Charles, she hadn’t had a whole lot of luck and she finally had met someone she could trust. It seems to me that the relationship was not finished when it was over.”

Haznat, who has said he doesn’t “see this movie doing well at all”, has also commented on their split. “Even after two years, the relationship wasn’t leading to a meaningful progression or conclusion and that was the main stress on both of us,” he recently told a UK newspaper.

Some say the couple split because Diana couldn’t bear the thought of moving to Pakistan, away from her children. Others claim it was because when the press did catch up with their subterfuge, Haznat couldn’t cope with the attention. “No one can truly say they know the reasons [why they broke up] except for those two people,” says Watts. “And, of course, it’s hard to know exactly what is happening in a relationship at the time, even when you are in it. I mean, how many times have you....