Age, Biography, and Wiki
Naomi Watts was born on September 28, 1968, in Shoreham, Kent, England. She later moved to Australia with her family, where she grew up. Watts is well-known for her diverse roles in both film and television, which have earned her several awards and nominations, including Academy Award nominations for "21 Grams" and "The Impossible".
| Occupation | Film Producer |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 28 September 1968 |
| Age | 56 Years |
| Birth Place | Shoreham, Kent, England |
| Horoscope | Libra |
| Country | England |
Height, Weight & Measurements
- Height: 5 feet 4.5 inches (164 cm)
- Weight: 55 kg (121 lbs)
- Measurements: 34-24-35 inches
Watts is known for her slender yet elegant physique, which has been featured in various films and media appearances.
| Height | 164 cm |
| Weight | 121 lbs |
| Body Measurements | |
| Eye Color | |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Naomi Watts was in a long-term relationship with actor Liev Schreiber from 2005 to 2016. The couple has two sons together, Alexander and Samuel. Watts is currently focusing on her career and personal life, including her wellness brand, Stripes.
Watts played a tormented journalist in the horror remake The Ring (2002). For playing a grief-stricken mother in Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams (2003) and Maria Bennett in the disaster film The Impossible (2012), she received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Watts' other notable film credits include starring roles in I Heart Huckabees (2004), King Kong (2005), Eastern Promises (2007), The International (2009), Birdman (2014), St. Vincent (2014), While We're Young (2015), The Glass Castle (2017), and Luce (2019). She also appeared in the Divergent franchise (2015–2016).
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.
In 2002 Watts recalled her early career in an interview. She had lost a role she wanted in Meet the Parents in 2000. She said, "It is a tough town. I think my spirit has taken a beating. The most painful thing has been the endless auditions. Knowing that you have something to offer, but not being able to show it, is so frustrating. As an unknown, you get treated badly. I auditioned and waited for things I did not have any belief in, but I needed the work and had to accept horrendous pieces of shit." Watts studied the Meisner Technique. She referred to this again in a 2012 interview. Watts said, "I came to New York and auditioned at least five times for Meet the Parents. I think the director liked me but the studio didn't. I heard every piece of feedback you could imagine, and in this case, it was 'not sexy enough'."
In 2003, Watts took the part of Julia Cook in Gregor Jordan's Australian film Ned Kelly, opposite Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush. She also starred in the Merchant-Ivory film Le Divorce. She portrayed Roxeanne de Persand, a poet who is pregnant and abandoned by her husband Charles-Henri de Persand. Roxeanne and her sister Isabel (played by Kate Hudson) dispute the ownership of a painting by Georges de La Tour with the family of Charles-Henri's lover. Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C" rating and lamented Watts's performance: "I'm disappointed to report that Hudson and Watts have no chemistry as sisters, perhaps because Watts never seems like the expatriate artiste she's supposed to be playing".
Her performance opposite Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro in Alejandro González Iñárritu's psychological drama 21 Grams (2003) earned Watts numerous award nominations, including her first nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. In the story, told in a non-linear manner, she portrayed Cristina Peck, a grief-stricken widow living a suburban life after her husband and two children were killed by Jack Jordan (Benicio del Toro). She became involved in a relationship with Paul Rivers (Sean Penn), an academic mathematician who was critically ill. She has said of the nomination, "It's far beyond what I ever dreamed for – that would have been too far fetched". The New York Times praised her: "Because Ms. Watts reinvents herself with each performance, it's easy to forget how brilliant she is. She has a boldness that comes from a lack of overemphasis, something actresses sometimes do to keep up with Mr. Penn". The San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "Watts is riveting, but she's much better in scenes of extreme emotion than in those requiring subtlety."
In 2004, Watts starred alongside Mark Ruffalo in the independent film We Don't Live Here Anymore, based on short stories by Andre Dubus. It explores the crises of two married couples who are friends and struggling in their lives. She reunited with Sean Penn in The Assassination of Richard Nixon, playing the wife of the would-be presidential assassin Samuel Byck (Penn). She teamed up with Jude Law and Dustin Hoffman in David O. Russell's ensemble comedy I Heart Huckabees. She headlined and produced the semi-autobiographical drama Ellie Parker (2005), which depicted the struggle of an Australian actress in Hollywood. The film began as a short film that was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. Over the next four years, it was expanded into a feature-length production. Film critic Roger Ebert praised Watts's performance: "The character is played by Watts with courage, fearless observation and a gift for timing that is so uncanny it can make points all by itself."
In the romantic drama The Painted Veil (2006), based on the novel of the same name by Somerset Maugham, Watts played the daughter of a lawyer and his wife. She is under pressure to marry and chooses a physician (Edward Norton) known as a bacteriologist. She is not prepared when her husband goes to Hong Kong, then a British colony, for work and then forces her to mainland China to a region suffering a cholera epidemic. Comparing her portrayal with Greta Garbo's in the original movie adapted from the same novel, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Watts makes the role work on her own terms–her Kitty is more desperate, more foolish, more miserable and more driven... and her spiritual journey is greater. Watts also provided the voice of a small role, Suzie Rabbit, in David Lynch's psychological thriller Inland Empire. In the same year, she was announced as the new face of the jewelers David Yurman and completed a photoshoot that was featured in the 2007 Pirelli Calendar.
In David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2007), Watts portrays a Russian-British midwife, opposite Viggo Mortensen. She delivers the baby of a drug-addicted 14-year old prostitute. In its review, Slate magazine observed that she "brings a wounded radiance to the overcurious midwife Anna. Though it's a bit of a one-note role, it's a note she's long specialised in, a kind of flustered moral aggrievement". Eastern Promises grossed US$56 million worldwide, (equivalent to US$0 million in 2025). Also that year she was a producer and starred in Michael Haneke's Funny Games (2007). She played a mother who, with her family, is held hostage by a pair of sociopathic teenagers. It was a remake of Haneke's 1997 film of the same name. According to the UK's The Daily Telegraph, the director said that he agreed to make the film on condition that he be allowed to cast Watts. The film was largely unnoticed by critics and audiences. Newsweek said that Watts "hurls herself into her physically demanding role with heroic conviction".
After a short hiatus from acting following the birth of her two children, Watts returned to acting in 2009, starring alongside Clive Owen in the political action thriller The International, in which she played a Manhattan assistant district attorney who partners with an Interpol agent to take down a merchant bank. The production was a moderate commercial success, grossing over US$60 million (equivalent to $0 million in 2025) worldwide. She next appeared in the drama Mother and Child, portraying the role of a lawyer who never knew her biological mother. ViewLondon found her to be "terrific as [her character], delivering a powerful performance that [...] isn't afraid to be unsympathetic". She was nominated for the Best Actress award at the Australian Film Institute Awards and for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female. Her next film, the Woody Allen-directed dramedy You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, opened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, and saw her portray Sally, a woman who has a troubled marriage with author Roy (played by Josh Brolin). It made over US$26 million (equivalent to $0 million in 2025). Her portrayal of Valerie Plame in the biographical thriller Fair Game followed, and marked the third pairing of Watts with Sean Penn after 21 Grams and The Assassination of Richard Nixon. The film earned Watts a Satellite Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2011, she appeared with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz in Jim Sheridan's psychological horror film Dream House, as the neighbour of a murdered family, and with Leonardo DiCaprio in Clint Eastwood's biographical drama J. Edgar, playing secretary Helen Gandy. While Dream House flopped, J. Edgar had a more favorable reception.
In Adore (2013), Watts starred with Robin Wright as two childhood friends who fall in love with each other's sons. On the film, critics concluded that Watts and Wright "give it their all, but they can't quite make Adore's trashy, absurd plot believable". She obtained the FCCA Award for Best Actress in 2014 for her role. The anthology comedy Movie 43 (2013) featured Watts as a devoted mother, alongside Liev Schreiber. Movie 43 was universally panned by critics, with Richard Roeper calling it "the Citizen Kane of awful".
Watts starred in Gus Van Sant's mystery drama The Sea of Trees, opposite Matthew McConaughey, as the wife of an American man who attempts suicide in Mount Fuji's "Suicide Forest". The film premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d'Or, but was heavily panned by both critics and audiences, who reportedly booed and laughed during its screening. Critic Richard Mowe stated the audience reaction should "give the film's creative team pause for reflection about exactly where they went so badly awry." Justin Chang of Variety also criticised the film, but commended Watts's performance for being "solidly moving and sometimes awesomely passive-aggressive." The Sea of Trees did not find an audience in theaters.
Like St. Vincent and While We're Young the previous year, Watts starred in two films—Demolition and Three Generations— which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, in 2015. In Demolition, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, Watts played a customer service representative and the interest of a grieving investment banker (Gyllenhaal). The Wrap felt that she "empathetically captures [her] harried single mom" role as she played "both the wit and the sadness with grace". In Three Generations, directed by Gaby Dellal, she appeared with Susan Sarandon and Elle Fanning as the mother of a young transgender man (Fanning). Pulled from the schedule days before its intended initial release, the film subsequently opened on selected theatres in May 2017.
Watts played Linda, the second wife of heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner (played by Liev Schreiber) in the biographical sport drama The Bleeder (2016), revolving around the life of Wepner and his 1975 fight with Muhammad Ali. Variety wrote in its review: "Slightly out of place as the feisty bartender who gives Wepner a second chance at his downest and outest, a spirited Naomi Watts nonetheless gives proceedings her best Amy Adams in The Fighter." She headlined the thriller Shut In (also 2016), playing a psychologist isolated with her child in a rural house during a winter storm. The film received largely negative reviews and made US$8 million worldwide.
Watts appeared in Twin Peaks, a limited event television series and a continuation of the 1990 show of the same name. It was broadcast on Showtime in 2017, to critical acclaim. Watts starred as "a therapist who begins to develop dangerous and intimate relationships with the people in her patients' lives" in the Netflix drama series Gypsy (also 2017), and served as one of its executive producers. While response was mixed, Gypsy was cancelled by Netflix after one season. In The Book of Henry (2017), Watts portrayed the mother of young genius who plans save the girl next door from abuse. The film polarized critics and audiences, but Rolling Stone described her as "a plus in any movie" and found her to be "excellent" in the role. In her other 2017 film, The Glass Castle opposite Brie Larson, and Woody Harrelson. An adaptation of Jeannette Walls's best selling memoir of the same name, Watts played the nonconformist mother of the author.
Watts had a relationship with Australian actor Heath Ledger from August 2002 to May 2004. In 2005, Watts began a relationship with American actor Liev Schreiber. On 26 September 2016, Watts and Schreiber announced their split after 11 years together.
Watts began dating American actor Billy Crudup in 2017, after they met on the set of the Netflix drama series Gypsy. The couple married on June 9, 2023. In June 2024, Watts and Crudup celebrated their nuptials in a second ceremony surrounded by their family in Mexico.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Billy Crudup (m. 2023) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2022, Naomi Watts' net worth is estimated to be approximately $35 million, primarily accumulated through her successful acting career in films and television. Her salary varies depending on the projects she takes on, with significant earnings from both blockbuster films and critically acclaimed dramas.
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 raping her. Watts returned to Los Angeles and the US for good but had difficulty finding agents, producers and directors willing to hire her. She never worked outside the film industry, but had some tight times in which she was unable to pay the rent on time and lost her medical insurance.
Business Ventures
In recent years, Watts has ventured into the wellness industry with her brand, Stripes. This brand focuses on menopausal women, aiming to provide wellness solutions and de-stigmatize menopause. By entering this niche market, Watts is expanding her influence beyond acting.
Labeled a sex symbol, Watts has been named by magazines such as People and Maxim in lists of the world's most beautiful women. Her advocacy includes ambassadorships the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and Pantene's Beautiful Lengths. Separated from actor Liev Schreiber, with whom she shares two children, Watts married actor Billy Crudup in 2023.
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."
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 John Duigan, 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 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".
"At first, everything was fantastic and doors were opened to me. But some people who I met through Nicole [Kidman], who had been all over me, had difficulty remembering my name when we next met. There were a lot of promises, but nothing actually came off. I ran out of money and became quite lonely, but Nic gave me company and encouragement to carry on."
After nine auditions, she won a supporting role of "Jet Girl" in the futuristic film Tank Girl (1995). The film met mixed reviews and flopped at the box office. It has since become something of a cult classic. Throughout the rest of the decade, Watts took mostly supporting roles in films. Occasionally she considered leaving the business, but: "there were always little bites. Whenever I felt I was at the end of my rope, something would come up. Something bad. But for me it was 'work begets work'; that was my motto." In 1996, she starred alongside Joe Mantegna, Kelly Lynch and J. T. Walsh in George Hickenlooper's action-thriller Persons Unknown; alongside James Earl Jones, Kevin Kilner and Ellen Burstyn in the period drama Timepiece; in Bermuda Triangle, a TV pilot that was not picked up for a full series, where she played a former documentary filmmaker who disappears in the Bermuda Triangle; She had the lead role in Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering, in which children in a small town become possessed under the command of a wrongfully murdered child preacher.
In 1999, she played Alice in the romantic comedy Strange Planet and the Texan student Holly Maddux in The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer. This was based on the true effort to capture Ira Einhorn, who was charged with Maddux's murder. In 2000, while David Lynch was developing the rejected pilot of Mulholland Drive as a feature film, Watts starred alongside Derek Jacobi, Jack Davenport and Iain Glen in the BBC TV film The Wyvern Mystery, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Sheridan Le Fanu. It was broadcast in March of that year. She had some near misses for roles in her early career: she was considered for significant roles in such films as 1997's The Postman and The Devil's Advocate; all eventually went to other actresses.
In Laurie Collyer's independent drama Sunlight Jr. (2013), Watts starred with Matt Dillon as a struggling working-class couple. The San Francisco Chronicle, praising Watts and Dillon, wrote in its review for the film that they are "formidable actors at the top of their game here [...] exhibiting a remarkable chemistry". Watts portrayed the title role in Oliver Hirschbiegel's Diana (her final film released in 2013), a biographical drama about the last two years of the life of Diana, Princess of Wales. Released amid much controversy given its subject, the film was a critical flop. James Berardinelli found the film to be a "dull, pointless" production and remarked that while Watts did a "decent job encapsulating the look and feel of Diana", her portrayal was "a two-dimensional recreation".
Watts received an endorsement deal with David Yurman jewelry. She served as the ambassador to Thierry Mugler's Angel fragrance from 2008 until 2011 when Eva Mendes overtook the role. The pair later coincidentally fronted a campaign for Pantene hair care products. Watts also appeared in a campaign for Ann Taylor in 2010. She was announced as a new 'face' of L'Oréal in 2014. Watts also founded the skincare company Onda Beauty in 2016 and appeared in a campaign for Fendi in 2020.
In January 2021, it was announced that Watts was an early investor in Thirteen Lune, an e-commerce site focused on makeup, skincare, haircare and wellness products owned by people of color and ally brands. In October 2022, Watts launched Stripes, a beauty and wellness brand focused on menopause health. The brand was acquired by L Catterton in June 2024. In October 2024, Watts was announced as an ambassador and designer for Coyuchi linen.
Social Network
Naomi Watts is active on social media platforms, particularly Instagram, where she shares updates about her personal life, career, and wellness brand. Her social media presence helps her connect with fans and promote her projects.
In 1999, director David Lynch began casting for his psychological thriller Mulholland Drive. He interviewed Watts after looking at her headshot, without having seen any of her previous work, and offered her the lead role. Lynch later said about his selection of Watts, "I saw someone that I felt had a tremendous talent, and I saw someone who had a beautiful soul, an intelligence—possibilities for a lot of different roles, so it was a beautiful full package." Conceived as a pilot for a television series, Lynch shot a large portion of the film in February 1999, planning to keep it open-ended for a potential series. However, the pilot was rejected. Watts recalled thinking at the time, "just my dumb luck, that I'm in the only David Lynch programme that never sees the light of day." Lynch filmed an ending for the work in October 2000, turning it into a feature film, which was picked up for distribution. Mulholland Drive, also starring Laura Harring and Justin Theroux, premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival to high critical acclaim and marked Watts's breakthrough. Reviewing her performance, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian stated that "Watts's face metamorphoses miraculously from fresh-faced beauty to a frenzied, teary scowl of ugliness."; Emanuel Levy wrote, "... Watts, in a brilliant performance, a young, wide-eyed and grotesquely cheerful blonde, full of high hopes to make it big in Hollywood." The film and Watts received numerous awards and nominations, including the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress and a nomination for the American Film Institute Award for Best Actress. The surrealist film explored the story of aspiring actress Betty Elms, played by Watts.
Watts starred in the sequel to The Ring, The Ring Two (2005), which despite a negative critical response, made more than US$161 million worldwide gross (equivalent to US$0 million in 2025). In 2005, Watts also headlined the remake of King Kong as Ann Darrow. She was the first choice for the role, portrayed by Fay Wray in the original film, and no other actors were considered. In preparation for her role, Watts met with Wray, who was to make a cameo appearance and say the final line of dialogue. Wray died at the age of 96 during pre-production. King Kong proved to be Watts's most commercially successful film yet. Helmed by director Peter Jackson, who had made The Lord of the Rings, the film won high praise and grossed US$550 million worldwide (equivalent to US$0 million in 2025). The Seattle Post-Intelligencer praised Watts's performance: "The third act becomes a star-crossed, "Beauty and the Beast" parable far more operatic and tragic than anything the original filmmakers could have imagined, exquisitely pantomimed by Watts with a poignancy and passion that rates Oscar consideration." Watts reprised her role as Darrow in the video game adaptation of King Kong, for which her voice performance garnered her significant praise. She was nominated for a Spike Video Game Award for Best Performance by a Female. Watts and the game's other cast members also won an award for Best Cast. Her other 2005 film release was Marc Forster's psychological thriller Stay, alongside Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling and Bob Hoskins.
Watts starred in The Impossible (2012), a disaster drama based on the true story of María Belón and her family's experience of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami; she played the lead role, with her name changed to Maria Bennett. The film was a critical darling, had the highest-grossing opening weekend for a film in Spain, and made US$180.2 million (equivalent to $0 million in 2025) globally. Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter stated that "Watts packs a huge charge of emotion as the battered, ever-weakening Maria whose tears of pain and fear never appear fake or idealised," while Justin Chang of Variety magazine remarked that she "has few equals at conveying physical and emotional extremis, something she again demonstrates in a mostly bedridden role." Damon Wise of The Guardian felt that "Watts is both brave and vulnerable, and her scenes with the young Lucas [...] are among the film's best." Watts earned nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, in addition to her second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
In 2006, Watts became a goodwill ambassador for Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, which helps raise awareness of issues relating to the disease. She has used her high profile and celebrity to bring attention to the needs of people living with this disease. Watts has featured in campaigns for fundraising, events and activities, including the 21st Annual AIDS Walk. On 1 December 2009, Watts met United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a public event commemorating World AIDS Day 2009.
Education
Watts attended Mosman High School in Sydney, Australia. She later moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. Her early life and education laid the foundation for her entry into the entertainment industry.
"You'd better know why you're here as an actor ... I'm here to work out my shit, what my problems are and know who I am, so by cracking open these characters perhaps that shines a light on it a little bit better ... I know myself. I mean, of course I know myself better but the journey and search continue because hopefully we're evolving and growing all the time."
