Naomi Watts

Like Turner Classic Movies, I seem to have instituted a “Star of the Month” feature in my Netflix habits. For July, that star was Naomi Watts, who I consider one of the best actresses in the business today. However, there were a lot of her films I had not seen, so I remedied that by Netflixin’.

Watts is older than you might think, 37. She really didn’t make a name for her self until into her thirties. She had a very small part in Flirting, which also starred a young Nicole Kidman and Thandie Newton, and that I saw years ago. She also made several other Australian films. My recent festival included Under the Lighthouse Dancing and Strange Planet, both of them romantic comedies of a sort.

If Watts has a film persona, it is as a demure woman who plays her emotions close the vest. She is pretty, but without being va-va-voom gorgeous, with a shy smile and an endearing expression. If I knew someone that looked like her, I would probably make a fool of myself in trying to win her. However, in her performances, you can see something lurking deeper within her persona. This is probably best typified by the role that made her a name, in Mulholland Drive. I saw the film in the theater and rented it again a few years ago, and I marvel at Watts’ performance. If she ever wins an honorary Oscar they will certainly show the clip of her character Betty’s audition with Chad Everett, in which the shy flower off the bus from Wisconsin uncoils in radiating sensuality.

Since then, Watts has made high-awareness pictures, like The Ring pictures, 21 Grams, in which she was nominated for an Oscar, and of course King Kong. The Ring was a decent horror thriller in an age when there is a lot of shoddy product of the genre slapped on the screen to get teenagers in on a Friday night (the sequel was highly unnecessary, though). 21 Grams is gripping and profoundly depressing, and has a confusing non-linear structure that I think I finally figured out on second viewing. I saw King Kong in the theater and have no pressing need to see it again, but I thought Watts rose above the bombast of the spectacle and turned in a terrific performance, considering she probably did most of it against a green screen.

Watts also made a few films I’d never heard of but are available on DVD. A few of them are TV movies—The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer, in which she effectively plays a woman subjected to emotional abuse by a partner, and The Outsider, where she is an Amish woman out West--sort of Shane meets Witness. There was a BBC production of the Wyvern Mystery, which was a gothic novel from the nineteenth century.

And just to prove that even the best actresses can slip up, there is The Shaft. This is perhaps the only film ever made that features an elevator repairman as the hero. An elevator in a high-rise has started killing people, and the repairman teams up with a reporter (Watts) to solve the case. Watts is genuinely bad in this film, tossing off her lines like an amateur. Granted, the material is rock-bottom, but Watts doesn’t help. It was made about the same time as Mulholland Drive. I’m sure she regrets that copies of The Shaft are floating around out there.