Naomi Watts Interview

07 January 2009

Naomi Watts gives a powerful performance as an esoteric ingenue in surreal

Naomi Watts gives a powerful performance as an esoteric ingenue in surreal "Mulholland Drive"

"Working with David Lynch means you have to trust him -- a lot," says Naomi Watts, star of the idiosyncratic director's latest bizarre, mind-bending chiller, "Mulholland Drive." "But what man better to trust than (one) who's created such a number of great films with great complex characters?"

Complex doesn't begin to define Watts' role in the film as an ingenuous ingenue mixed up in a dark, cryptic Hollywood mystery. At first Betty Elms seems like an absurdly wide-eyed innocent, fresh off the bus from Ontario with stars in her eyes and dreams of an acting career.

"It's like she's from the 1950s, beaming with optimism and joy," Watts laughs, then describes the exaggeration required of her for the scene in which Betty arrives in L.A. glowing with awe like an adult Shirley Temple. "I remember shooting that moment, and David was like 'Pump it up! It's like the best moment you've ever experienced in your whole life!' I felt like I was psychotic because, I'm not three-and-a-half, you know?"

But as Betty becomes involved with a femme fatale amnesia victim (Laura Harding) and embroiled in investigating the woman's dangerous past, layers of seeming naivete peel away, revealing her to be shrewder than she lets on. Such an acting challenge is what made Watts so enthusiastic to talk about the film during a visit to San Francisco last month.

"When I was first reading (the script) I thought, she's too happy and perky and peppy. I thought, she belongs on a cereal box! Then you get a few pages in and you can tell there's something quite manipulative about her. You can tell that all that lovely, perky happiness is not actually the truth. It's something twisted."

Watts is a petite, slender blonde with the posture of a military guard and an inquisitive personality, peppered with playfulness and sensuality. Getting ready to pose for pictures, she kicks her legs over the arm of her chair, suddenly taking on a seductive sparkle as if someone cranked up a metaphorical volume knob labeled "gorgeousness."

On screen in "Mulholland Drive" she shows astounding range and subtlety as an actress, slowly and resourcefully exposing slivers of Betty's esoteric psyche. After successfully walking a credibility tightrope with the character's innocence in the early going, she shows off Betty's surprising acting chops in a startling audition scene in which she uncorks a wanton sexuality. Then in a typically Lynchian narrative zigzag, the movie's last act jumps backwards in time and Betty mysteriously vanish as Watts morphs into an entirely different character -- a junkie with shocking connections to the enigmatic amnesia victim.

Watts' strung-out performance in these later scenes is astonishing to watch, especially in contrast to the giddy girlishness that comes before it. What may be more surprising is the fact that the actress didn't have to audition for the role -- at least not in the traditional sense.

"(Lynch) has a system where he goes through photographs and pulls out the ones he likes and says, 'I want to meet with these.'" Watts says, noting that if the director had seen any of her movies -- she was Jet Girl in the comic book cult movie "Tank Girl," a prostitute in "Dangerous Beauty," a boarding school student in the early Nicole Kidman vehicle "Flirting" -- he never mentioned them. "He doesn't even look at your credits."

"When I met with him, it was just the two of us sitting down and chatting. Nothing about work, just about life," which was a relief, Watts grins, because "I'm a terrible auditioner."

At the time "Mulholland Drive" was planned as a pilot for Lynch's return to series TV. But even though ABC had a hit with the director's surreal soap opera "Twin Peaks," they passed on this ever more outlandish concept that included such nightmarish characters as a crippled, mobster/movie mogul midget manipulating the lives of susceptible Hollywood denizens.

"There had to be a whole bunch of new ideas added when we found out it was going to be a movie," Watts says, but she declines to offer any more details. "David doesn't like to get into the specifics of what was TV and what was film. It takes away from the mystery. But I'm staggered to this day about how he pulled it all together."

Contactmusic

Top 10 Videos

10 Years

Beautiful

2

Fast Girls

Fast Girls

3

Shaggy

Hey Sexy Lady

4

Air

Sexy Boy

5

The Staves

Tired As F***

6

Robin Thicke

Blurred Lines (Unrated Version)

7

All That Remains

Six (Live)

8

Fugees

Boof Baf

9

Fleur East

Sax [Live]

10




Advertisement
Advertisement

Movies and Trailers

The Glass Castle Movie Review

The Glass Castle Movie Review

There are quite a few terrific moments in this true story, based on the memoir...

The Glass Castle Trailer

The Glass Castle Trailer

Jeanette Walls is raised with the idea that city life is not something to be...

The Book of Henry Movie Review

The Book of Henry Movie Review

Apparently, this offbeat script had been making the rounds in Hollywood for some 20 years...

The Book Of Henry Trailer

The Book Of Henry Trailer

Henry Carpenter (Jaeden Lieberher) is a genius for his meagre 11 years and the reason...

Advertisement
Mulholland Drive Trailer

Mulholland Drive Trailer

When a young women finds herself with amnesia following a car accident on Mulholland Drive,...

Shut In Trailer

Shut In Trailer

Mary Portman is suffering greatly with the grief of the death of her husband Richard,...

Demolition Movie Review

Demolition Movie Review

With its darkly emotive themes and brittle humour, this well-made drama by Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas...

The Divergent Series: Allegiant Movie Review

The Divergent Series: Allegiant Movie Review

After the more thrilling Insurgent, this saga reverts to the talky style of the original...

The Divergent Series: Allegiant  Trailer

The Divergent Series: Allegiant Trailer

In the third instalment of the Divergent series Allegiant, Tris and Four find themselves plunged...

About Ray Trailer

About Ray Trailer

Ray is, in many ways, a regular New York teenager who enjoys skating, goes to...

Demolition Trailer

Demolition Trailer

Davis Mitchell is very successful in what he does for a living, though he's not...

Advertisement
Artists
Actors
    Filmmakers
      Artists
      Bands
        Musicians
          Artists
          Celebrities
             
              Artists
              Interviews