Breakthrough Interviews: Director Oliver Hirschbiegel on 'Diana' and Naomi Watts (audio)

“As a director, you can only do so much. What you do is you find the right actor. That is 50 percent of the work, really, and I always had Naomi [Watts] down as my first name ever. Then you meet and talk about certain aspects, you look at videos together, but then you have to send the actress off and she has to do her homework. So while I am prepping my work, she does the same thing over months. We congregate frequently but most of the stuff she has to do herself.

In this case, [Naomi] did something unusual. Usually, an actor goes from inside out. In this case, she started working on [Princess] Diana's movements, her mannerisms, the way she looked and the way she talked. [Diana] had a very specific posh English accent and doing that helped [Naomi] get inside of the character and really become Diana. It was fascinating for me. Very few actors have the ability to go as deep....."