Naomi Watts

Born in England, Ms. Watts moved to Australia at the age of 14. Her first major film role came in John Duigan’s Flirting. Watts earned global acclaim for her double role in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, which world-premiered at the 2001 Cannes International Film Festival. The portrayal earned her Best Actress awards from a number of critics groups, including the National Society of Film Critics and the Chicago Film Critics Association. She was named the Female Star of Tomorrow at the ShoWest film industry honors, received the Hollywood Discovery Award for Breakthrough Acting at the Hollywood Film Festival, and won the Breakthrough Actress award from the National Board of Review.

Her performance in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams brought her Academy Award as well as BAFTA, Critics’s Choice, and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, among other honors. Following the film’s world premiere at the 2003 Venice International Film Festival, she received the Audience Award (Lion of the Public) for Best Actress.Ms. Watts’s other films include Peter Jackson’s King Kong, for which she was named Actress of the Year by the London Film Critics Circle; Gore Verbinski’s The Ring; Merchant Ivory’s Le Divorce; John Curran’s We Don’t Live Here Anymore and The Painted Veil, which she also produced and co-produced, respectively; Niels Mueller’s The Assassination of Richard Nixon; David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees; and Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, which she also executive-produced.