Naomi Watts, English-Australian actress and producer
Naomi Ellen Watts (born 28 September 1968) is a British actress. She made her film debut in the Australian drama For Love Alone (1986) and then appeared in the Australian television series Hey Dad..! (1990), Brides of Christ (1991), Home and Away (1991), and the film Flirting (1991). After moving to the United States, Watts initially struggled as an actress, with roles in small-scale films, until she appeared in David Lynch's psychological thriller Mulholland Drive in 2001, playing an aspiring actress, by which she rose to international prominence.
She then played a tormented journalist in the horror remake The Ring (2002), and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as a grief-stricken mother in Alejandro González Iñárritu's film 21 Grams (2003). Her profile continued to grow with 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 another Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In the 2010s, she starred in such films as Birdman (2014), St. Vincent (2014), While We're Young (2015), The Glass Castle (2017), and Luce (2019). Watts also continued to act in blockbusters, with appearances in the Divergent franchise (2015–2016), and ventured into television with the Showtime mystery drama series Twin Peaks (2017) and the biographical limited series The Loudest Voice (2019).
Watts is particularly known for her work in remakes and independent productions with dark or tragic themes, as well as portrayals of characters that 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 been an ambassador for Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and Pantene's Beautiful Lengths. Despite significant media attention, Watts is reticent about her personal life. She was in a relationship with American actor Liev Schreiber from 2005 to 2016, with whom she has two sons.