Naomi Watts has given an interview to Parade magazine, and rather than refuse to talk about her relationship with Liev Schreiber and the death of her former flame Heath Ledger, she didn’t shy away from the subject at all.
On Heath Ledger:
“I hadn’t really been that familiar with his work,” Watts recalls. “Then, when I got to the set and did that first scene with him, I was like, ‘Wow! This guy is alive.’ It was just something deep in his eyes. You could look into them, and they would tell a thousand stories in one glance. There was a wonderful mixture of power and fragility at work in everything he did, which just pulls you in. His strength didn’t scare you. It intrigued you. And his fragility touched you.”
The couple parted amicably in 2004, separated by the distance of two growing careers, but stayed friends until Ledger’s tragic death from an accidental overdose in early 2008 at age 28. “It’s still incredibly difficult,” Watts says, her voice trailing off.
On her relationship with Liev Schreiber:
In 2005, she connected with Liev Schreiber, a powerful actor in his own right. “I started out living in L.A., and then I met this guy who hates L.A.!” Watts says, laughing. Her partner’s dark intensity compelled that side of her own personality. “He’s a complicated man, which I’ve always been drawn toward in men,” she says. “He’s fiercely intelligent.”
Watts refuses to say when or even if she and Schreiber will conventionalize their relationship. “It’s not like I’ve grown up having this dream of a fairy-tale wedding,” she says. “My mother married twice and had two divorces. And Liev comes from the same kind of background. Maybe one day we’ll just wake up and go, ‘Hey, let’s do this.’ And maybe not. He and I have a family. We’re very much together. We just don’t have that certificate, and that’s okay with both of us. He gave me a beautiful ring, although I’m not wearing it right now.”
To say that Liev Schreiber comes from a similar background of divorced parents is underplaying the truth a little. Liev’s parent’s were involved in a custody dispute, which resulted in his father kidnapping him briefly, before a court battle which saw him returned to his mother. He spent a brief stint of his childhood in a commune, then an ashram, and going by a Hindu name. I don’t think these are the typical experiences of a divorced child.
However, I see Naomi’s point, which is that for some children of divorced parents who couldn’t maintain a friendship, the family unit is more important than the piece of paper.
Naomi talks about her start in Hollywood:
“It was awful,” she says. Her defense was to try to become someone else: “Be the pretty girl, the funny girl, the sexy girl, be whatever it was they wanted,” Watts recalls. It didn’t take her far. “You get to a point where you’ve become that person for that day, and you dilute your personality to the point where it’s actually nonexistent. You walk into a room, and you don’t know who you are or who you should be, and they can’t connect with you because it’s not a truth.”
But Kidman, who was starting to get important movie roles, encouraged her. “I remember many times saying, ‘Oh, I just can’t do it. I’m going to wrap it up and call it a day.’ And Nicole would say, ‘Hang in there.’ She told me that it just takes one thing—and she was right in the end.”
In 2000, director David Lynch (Twin Peaks) was searching for the lead actress for his next movie, Mulholland Drive. Lynch was looking through a pile of publicity photos when something about Watts’ face stopped him. He called her in.
“I felt he was genuinely interested,” Watts remembers. “He wanted to know about my family. It was just conversation, and I wasn’t used to having that, and I felt myself relax. I let him get rid of all those façades that I had built up over the years.”
I love that Naomi and Nicole have maintained a relationship right through their teens to middle age, despite the fact that Nicole married a superstar and went to Hollywood while Naomi stayed home in Australia and did small roles. Parade implies that she was a small fish in a big pond here, but I honestly can’t think of anything I’ve seen her in prior to ‘Mulholland Drive’, even though looking at her IMBD page I have definitely seen some of those Australian films.
Liev Schreiber and his older son, Alexander Pete, 18 months, are shown out in Brentwood and Santa Monica on 1/29/09. Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber are shown out together in Brentwood with their baby, Samuel Kai, six weeks, in a carrier on 1/28/09. Credit: Fame
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