Naomi Watts

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 third season of David Lynch's 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, for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

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.