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Naomi Ellen Watts (born 28 September 1968) is a British actress. After her family moved to Australia, she made her film debut there in the drama For Love Alone (1986). She appeared in three television series, Hey Dad..! (1990), Brides of Christ (1991), and Home and Away (1991), and the film Flirting (1991). Ten years later, Watts moved to the United States, where she initially struggled as an actress. She took roles in small-scale films until she starred in her breakthrough role as an aspiring actress in David Lynch's psychological thriller Mulholland Drive in 2001. Watts played a tormented journalist in the horror remake The Ring (2002). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as a grief-stricken mother in Alejandro González Iñárritu's film 21 Grams (2003). She had starring roles in I Heart Huckabees (2004), King Kong (2005), Eastern Promises (2007), and The International (2009). For her role as Maria Bennett in the disaster film The Impossible (2012), Watts received a second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In the 2010s, she also starred in films including Birdman (2014), St. Vincent (2014), While We're Young (2015), The Glass Castle (2017), and Luce (2019), and appeared in the Divergent franchise (2015–2016). Watts ventured into television with the Showtime mystery series Twin Peaks (2017) and the biographical miniseries The Loudest Voice (2019). In 2022, she began starring in the Netflix thriller series The Watcher. In 2024, she portrayed Babe Paley in the anthology series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. Watts is particularly known for her work in remakes and independent productions with dark or tragic themes, as well as for portrayals of characters who endure loss or suffering. Magazines such as People and Maxim have included her on their lists of the world's most beautiful women. She has served as an ambassador for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and Pantene's Beautiful Lengths. Watts is reticent about discussing her personal life. From 2005 to 2016, she was in a relationship with American actor Liev Schreiber, with whom she has two sons. In June 2023, she married American actor Billy Crudup. Early life and education Naomi Ellen Watts was born on 28 September 1968, in Shoreham, Kent, England. She is the daughter of Myfanwy (Miv) Edwards (née Roberts), an antiques dealer and costume and set designer, and Peter Watts (1946–1976), a road manager and audio engineer who worked with Pink Floyd. Watts's maternal grandfather was Welsh. Watts's parents divorced when she was four years old. After the divorce, their mother moved several times with Watts and her older brother Ben within South East England. Their father Peter Watts left Pink Floyd in 1974 and remarried in 1976. In August 1976, when Watts was nearly eight years old, he was found dead in a flat in Notting Hill, London, of an apparent heroin overdose. Following his death, Watts's mother moved the family to Llanfawr Farm in Llangefni and Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, towns on the island of Anglesey in North Wales, to live with her parents, Nikki and Hugh Roberts. During this period of three years, Watts attended a Welsh medium school, Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni. She later said of her time in Wales: "We took Welsh lessons in a school in the middle of nowhere while everyone else was taking English. Wherever we moved, I would adapt and pick up the regional accent. It's obviously significant now, me being an actress. Anyway, there was quite a lot of sadness in my childhood, but no lack of love." In 1978, her mother remarried and moved with her children to Suffolk. (She and her second husband later divorced.) There Watts attended Thomas Mills High School. Watts has said that she wanted to become an actress after seeing her mother performing on stage and from the time she watched the 1980 film Fame. In 1982, when Watts was 14, the family moved to Sydney, Australia. Her mother Myfanwy established a career in the burgeoning film business, first working as a stylist for television commercials. She turned to costume design, and worked for the soap opera Return to Eden. Watts briefly cameoed as a model in two episodes. Watts was enrolled by her mother in acting lessons in Sydney. She auditioned for numerous television advertisements, where she met and befriended the young actress Nicole Kidman. In Australia, Watts attended Mosman High School and North Sydney Girls High School. She did not graduate from school. After leaving school she worked as a papergirl, a negative cutter, and managed a Delicacies store in Sydney's affluent North Shore. At the age of 18, Watts decided to become a model. She signed with a models agency that sent her to Japan, but after several failed auditions, she returned to Sydney. She began to work in advertising for a department store. Follow Me magazine hired her as an assistant fashion editor. A casual invitation to participate in a drama workshop inspired Watts to quit her job and pursue acting. Despite her years in Australia, Watts considers herself firmly British in regards to her nationality. She has said that: "I consider myself British and have very happy memories of the UK. I spent the first 14 years of my life in England and Wales and never wanted to leave. When I was in Australia I went back to England a lot." Career Early roles and struggling career (1986–2000) Watts's career began in television, where she made brief appearances in commercials. She made her film debut in For Love Alone (1986). It was set in the 1930s and based on Christina Stead's 1945 best-selling novel of the same name. In 1990 she appeared in two episodes of the fourth season of the Australian sitcom Hey Dad..!. At the 1989 premiere of her friend Nicole Kidman's film Dead Calm, Watts met xxx, who invited her to take a supporting role in his 1991 indie film Flirting. The film received critical acclaim and was featured on American critic Roger Ebert's list of the 10 best films of 1992. Also in 1991, she took the part of Frances Heffernan, a girl who struggles to find friends at a Catholic school in Sydney, in the award-winning mini-series Brides of Christ. She also had a recurring role in the soap opera Home and Away as the handicapped Julie Gibson. Watts was offered a role in the drama series A Country Practice but turned it down, not wanting to "get stuck on a soap for two or three years". She later said that decision was "naïve". Watts took a year off to travel, visiting Los Angeles and being introduced to agents through Kidman. Encouraged, Watts decided to move to the United States, to pursue her career further. In 1993, she had a small role in the John Goodman film Matinee. She returned to Australia temporarily to star in three Australian films: another of Duigan's pictures, Wide Sargasso Sea; and the drama The Custodian. She had her first leading role in the film Gross Misconduct, as a student who accuses one of her teachers (played by Jimmy Smits) of.... Discover the Ellen Jacobi popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ellen Jacobi books.