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NAOMI WATTS
BIOGRAPHY
Naomi Watts (born September
28, 1968) is an English-born Australian actress and producer.
Watts was born in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, England, where she lived
until the age of eight. Her parents, Peter and Myfanwy Watts had
separated when she was four years old, and when she was seven her father
died. Following her father's death, her mother relocated the family to
the town of Llangefni (more specifically Llanfawr Farm, a district of
Llangefni), in Northern Wales, where they lived with Naomi's
grandparents, Hugh and Nikki Roberts, although her mother occasionally
moved the family around Wales and England, usually to follow boyfriends,
but she always ended up returning to Llangefni. She lived there until
she was 14. Then, during a trip to Australia, her mother became
convinced that there was "the land of opportunities" and moved the
family to Sydney in 1982. Her grandmother, Nikki, was Australian, which
made it easier to obtain the documentation necessary, since Naomi and
her family were entitled to Australian citizenship.
Her father was a sound engineer with Pink Floyd and her mother is
described by Watts as a hippie "with passive-aggressive tendencies" who
used to threaten to send her and her brother to foster care in order to
convince her grandparents to take care of the family, since her mother
had no money after her father's passing.
In Sydney, she attended several acting schools (and in the very first
lesson in the first school, she met Nicole Kidman, with whom she shared
a taxi home from class). In 1986 she took a break from acting and went
to Japan to work as a model, but the experience was fruitless, and Watts
describes it as one of the worst periods of her life, which lasted for
about four months. Upon returning to Australia, Watts went to work for a
local department store and from there she went to work as assistant
fashion editor with an Australian fashion magazine. She only returned to
acting when a casual invitation from a colleague to participate in a
small play rekindled her passion for the scenic arts and prompted her to
quit her job and dedicate herself completely to making it as an actress.
She first appeared in television commercials and then the drama series
Home and Away in 1988 in the role of Julie Gibson. Her first big break
came with the 1995 movie Tank Girl with the part of Jet Girl.
In 2001, Watts appeared in David Lynch's Mulholland Dr., a performance
which won high praise. The quality and size of Watts' roles improved
after Mulholland Dr., and she starred in the highly successful US remake
of The Ring, a Japanese horror movie. In 2004 she received an Academy
Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in the film 21
Grams.
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