Interview on FilmForce.ign

The star of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive talks about casting call nightmares and working within the Lynchian labyrinth.

Naomi Watts, despite having acted in more than 20 films, is still relatively unknown here in the States. This is probably due to the fact that she was born in England and raised down under in Australia, and as a result logged a lot of screen time in either British or Aussie productions. But Watts latest role, as that of Betty Elms, is in David Lynch's latest endeavor, Mulholland Drive and as such should turn a lot of heads and wake the world up to this lithe blonde beauty's acting chops.

While Watts may be a fresh face to many moviegoers, she's already a seasoned actress and shares a lot in common with her fellow thespians, both stateside and abroad, especially when it comes to casting call catastrophes. Every actor/actress has a few of these lodged away in their memory and Naomi Watts is no different. When prompted to recall one of her casting nightmares she smiles wryly and says,

"I have millions. I mean I really do have a litany of them and I can't remember them all now. Maybe I've blocked them out."

After some gentle prodding on my part, Watts concedes and offered up the following

"I got to meet a really fancy director, and I'm not gonna say his name and it was a big coup that I got to meet him", she begins. "I'd flown back from New York to meet him. I'd cancelled theater tickets and I really couldn't afford to do that, it was a great expense and I was really looking forward to it, as well.

But, no, you've got this meeting and it's a big thing, do not miss it. So I flew back and anyway I think I was the last person that he saw that day. I was reading and I remember stopping the scene at one point because I had a question and I looked up and he was sleeping. And I was like mortified, absolutely horrified. There was a casting woman [in the room] as well and I tried to go back to it and pretend that I didn't notice. If it was today I'd be going [Watts raises her voice and snaps her fingers briskly] 'Hey! I just came back from New York and this is my 10-minutes. Let's work here, gimme my time!' But at the time [Watts adopts a quiet, meek voice] I was like 'Oh, I'm taking up his time and I must quickly get out of here."

Alas, compared to that, Naomi's meeting with David Lynch was pure butter.

"He looks at photographs and just goes through a stack of them and decides who he wants to meet, not from looking at their resume, but just literally the face on each photograph. [He sees something] in the eyes and he somehow responds in an intuitive way, I guess. And he says 'Okay, let's meet with her.' And he maybe picks three, four others. And then you go in and meet with him",  Watts says of Lynch's 'legendary' auditioning process.   She pauses briefly before continuing. "But we're told that if he falls in love with you he doesn't need to meet the other girls. He doesn't say it on the spot, but he just decides that that's it and he doesn't have to meet anymore. Which is exactly what happened with me. I had one more meeting the next day with him. By the way, when I say 'meeting' it was completely different from the regular way of auditioning or getting a project. It was just an exchange between two people, very conversational. It could not have been more warm and sort of human. Normally you walk into these cold rooms and there's like five people sitting around a big table and they're just looking at you. It's very unnerving and intimidating. But we sat and we talked and we didn't talk about anything to do with work.  We just talked about life, you know, where I was from, family stuff and he talked about his stuff and then it was like 'Okay, nice to meet you.' And then he gave me a hug at the end of the meeting. I was like 'Wow, this is so cool. I love David Lynch, I love his movies, and now I'm gonna enjoy them even more because he's such a cool guy.' And then that afternoon they said he wanted me to come back and meet with him again."

So how did Naomi approach her second meeting with Lynch?

"[The first interview] I'd gone as myself because I had very little information, they were withholding everything except that [the part] was a young actress in pursuit of her dreams", explains Watts.  "[For the second interview] they wanted me to get a little bit more dressed up, 'cause I'd gone with no make-up [the first time]. So I went and got my hair blown out and put some make-up on and a more form-fitting dress. And I was thinking the whole time when I heard that they wanted me to go looking more sexy and attractive or whatever, I was thinking 'Oh my God, he thinks I'm ugly. I'm never gonna get it. He's gonna hire some fucking super-model.' So I was feeling a bit insecure about it. But when I walked in he was like [and here Naomi adopts a nasally twang in an attempt to capture the mannerisms of David Lynch] 'Oh Naomi, I'm so sorry I had to get you back here. And you look beautiful. Look at you, you're a damn fine looking lady!' He was very demonstrative and verbal and he put me at ease right away and I felt comfortable."

In addition to audition nightmares (as well as memorable ones), every actor has a few bad movies under their belt. Once again Watt comes through in spades on this front, having the dubious honor of being the lead in Children of the Corn IV amongst a few other late night B-movie extravaganzas.

"There's a lot of skeletons in my closet, but I know what they're wearing," she says with a gleam in her eye and an infectious laugh escaping from her throat. "I'm not gonna act all ashamed of it", she finishes off with the remainder of her rich laugh.   When I counter that it's almost become like a rite of passage for young actors to do a horror movie (think J. Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street, Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th, and Renee Zellweger in Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, to name a few), Watt agrees.  "Yeah, it is, either that or a smutty movie of some sort. And I've not done that.",  she quickly adds.  'I'd rather that [do a horror film] than taking off my clothes, you know?"

While her memories of Floyd are hazy, at best, one thing Watts has down to a "T' is the American accent. Watching her in such fare as Mulholland Drive and Children of the Corn IV you would swear that she was a corn-fed Midwestern belle, not a born in Shoreham-raised in Australia thespian. When I tell Watts that I knew nothing about her prior to seeing Mulholland Drive and completely thought that she was from the American heartland she enthusiastically says, "Really?   That's great!" It never ceases to amaze me at how accurately British actresses latch on to the American vernacular and how American actors, with few exceptions, can never do a passable Aussie or English accent. "Yeah, I don't know what that is, but it's absolutely true," confers Watts. "It's much easier for an Australian, and with British, too, to go American than for an American to go the other way. I don't know why, though."

Did Watts study American 101 at acting school? "No,' she says with a clipped sigh.   "You know what it must be? In Australia and England we're very much influenced by the America culture. We've been watching American movies and listening to American music since we were teeny little kids. So maybe it's just been indoctrinated into you somehow in some sort of subliminal way. So by the time you make the choice to be an actor, you've already got that in you somehow. Whereas the American culture is so strong, maybe they're [American actors of the day] more learning and growing up with their own cinema and TV rather than European and Australian [cinema and TV]. I think that it must have something to do with it." Chock one up for Dallas and McDonald's, baby!