From New York Times,
Sunday, May 11, 2003

Naomi Watts's Ride, Post - "Mulholland Drive"
For an Actress on the Rise, the Key is Pain
By Luisita Lopez Torregrosa

Vancouver, British Columbia
Quietly, alone, her hands in her jeans pockets, Naomi Watts moves through a small group of couples toward the entrance of the hotel lounge. Her face, pale without makeup, has been seen by million of people on the screen and in a dozen magazines, but she goes through the hall unnoticed. Nothing about her advertises her fame, or her status, at 34, as one of the most critically acclaimed actresses of her generation.

She's in Vancouver making a low-budget film about marital crackups - she's a producer as well as the star - during a break in a schedule that includes finishing "21 Grams" for the Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Amores Perros") promoting "Ned Kelly" in Australia and waiting for the opening, in August, of her new film, the Merchant Ivory production "Le Divorce".

[…]

The producer Ismail Merchant and the director James Ivory cast her (as the pregnant poet jilted by her husband in "Le Divorce") after seeing "Mulholland Drive". The same is true for Mr. Gonzalez Inarritu, who said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where he now lives, "She has the beautiful face of an innocent woman one moment, and the next moment she will have the face of Devil". Speaking in Spanish, he continued, "To me, she's like a wild orchid".

Scrunched up on a cushioned banquette in her jeans and Puma sneakers, the wild orchid is talking now about her father, Peter Watts. A sound engineer for the rock group Pink Floyd in the early 1970's, he divorced her mother, Myffanwy (Miv), when Naomi was 4 and died when she was 7. "Lots of people talk about their memories of childhood", she says, "but I have little or no memory of mine. I could count the memories I have of my father on less that one hand. Can't even remember when I was 8. I think I was checked out."

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