In this article: Capturing King Kong

The new queen of the big scream

From "The Ring Two" to "King Kong," Naomi Watts gets paid to act scared. But you'll be surprised at what really frightens this otherwise fearless Aussie.

By Hilary de Vries

Naomi Watts is scared. No, not of her terrifying movie sequel "The Ring Two, which opens next week. And not of Hollywood's biggest ape, King Kong, her co-star in the remake of the legendary horror film due out next December.

Watts and Nicole Kidman have been best friends since they were teens.

At the moment, the thing that has Watts cowering behind a newspaper in the lobby of a swanky Santa Monica hotel is every star's worst nightmare: being recognized by a stranger with a script -- in this case, the bearded guy sitting next to us, pounding furiously on his laptop. He comes over to make his pitch anyway. After she politely begs off and the writer grudgingly retreats, Watts shrinks back into her chair like a mugging victim.

"I'm really shy with people I don't know," she says, tugging the wool scarf wrapped around her neck even closer. "I just don't like absorbing all that attention."

She's going to have to start trying. At 36, a time when most of her peers are starting to freak about hitting the big 4-0, Watts is just hitting her stride.

Why the late start? Amazingly, especially in Hollywood -- where there's no shortage of towering ambition, and egos to match -- Watts says she's been something of a reluctant star. "A lot of people are afraid of success, and I think that was true for me," she says, gripping the ends of her scarf. "In my work, I try to make myself fearless. But with everything else, things scare me all the time."

With any other actress of her caliber, that could be written off as so much posturing. But spend any time with her and it's obvious Watts is speaking from the heart. Maybe it's due to her late-bloomer status. Or maybe it's fallout from her tumultuous childhood: She had lived in two hemispheres by the time she was 14, after her parents divorced when she was 4 and her father, a sound man for Pink Floyd, died when she was 7.

Whatever its cause, Watts in person behaves less like a bona fide A-lister than someone still seeking her place in the universe, with none of the onscreen poise and command that have made her such a hot ticket. In fact, the British-born, Aussie-raised actress spent years being overlooked by producers in Hollywood, where she was largely considered another cute, if unfunny, blonde who happened to be one of Nicole Kidman's best friends. "I spent a lot of time going out for sitcoms and not getting them," Watts recalls. Explains Walter Parkes, a producer of both Ring movies: "Naomi is a gifted actress, but she just seemed sweet." He didn't consider Watts for the role of the grittily determined mother until he saw her in 2001's "Mulholland Drive" at her agent's insistence. "I finally saw the full range of what she could do."

The decade-in-the-making overnight sensation suddenly found herself in demand with that career-launching "Mulholland" performance. She hit pay dirt with two subsequent films, striking box-office gold with 2002's terrifying "The Ring" and earning a best actress Oscar nomination for the 2003 indie drama "21 Grams."

Now, the demure-looking star seems poised to seal her reputation not only as a gifted actress but as Hollywood's newest scream queen, with the "Ring" sequel, King Kong and yet a third thriller in the works, called "Stay." Parkes compares Watts to those classic Alfred Hitchcock blondes Tippi Hedren, Grace Kelly and Kim Novak.

Whether she will join their league remains to be seen. Certainly, the offer to play the iconic blond starlet Ann Darrow in King Kong -- the role that was Wray's signature even though she made more than 80 movies -- gave Watts a moment's pause.

"This is the biggest film I've made, and I had a few minutes of worry whether this would be the only thing I'll be remembered for," she says, adding with a laugh: "I'm also about 15 years too old to play it." (Wray was 26 in the 1933 original; Jessica Lange was 27 in the 1976 version.)

"There was a time in the later part of my career struggle where I felt I really had to fight the clock, but now I try not to get too conscious of the age thing," she says, ticking off a list of her peers -- names like Kidman, Julia Roberts and Julianne Moore -- who are also bumping up against Hollywood's brutal sell-by date.

For now, plastic surgery is not a way to extend her time on Hollywood's front ranks. "I'll never say 'never' and I'll never judge, but I think I should keep my face as natural as possible, because the camera doesn't lie," she says with a shrug. Besides, "my job is to tell the truth, not be beautiful."

So where does Watts see herself at age 40? "Taking long breaks," she says, adding quickly, "having a family and doing other things."

"I think about it a lot," she says of having children. Although she is open to adopting, as her pal Kidman did, Watts really wants to give birth. "I'd like to have a child and be a mother," she says simply.

Meanwhile, she won't rule out dating an actor again, despite the hassles she encountered before her split with Heath Ledger last spring. "I've had only two or three paparazzi situations [since], and when we were going out, it was like every time we left the house, they were there," she says. That kind of scrutiny has left her with a lot of empathy for Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, now struggling through a separation splashed all over the tabloids. "It's so hard to break up with someone, no matter how mutual or how right it is," Watts says. The media scrutiny "just makes it toxic poison."

Boyfriend or no, Watts already has taken one step toward a future family -- and attacking some of her fears, she says -- by buying a house, her first, in L.A.'s tony Brentwood. "The best thing is to identify your fears and try to come to terms with them, and I needed a nest," she says.

And needed it apparently more than she knew. When she walked into her home for the first time last Christmas, "I literally burst into tears," she says, flashing a huge smile. "I thought, 'This is why I've worked so hard.' I finally felt an enormous sense of groundedness that I hadn't ever felt before."

Hilary de Vries is a Los Angeles-based writer whose new novel, "The Gift Bag Chronicles," will be published in June.

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Capturing King Kong

Even before she arrived on the King Kong set in September, Watts had a pretty good idea of what she was in for as the love interest of the giant, skyscraper-climbing ape. Earlier in the summer, she and director Peter Jackson had hiked to the windswept top of the Empire State Building in preparation for the film's famous final scenes.

"I'm not good with heights, and we went way up beyond where tourists can go," Watts says in L.A. during a break from shooting the movie in New Zealand, where the "Lord of the Rings" director is re-creating the teeming streets of New York circa 1930. Watts stars in the $110 million Kong remake, due out in December (following in the footsteps of Fay Wray in the original 1933 classic and Jessica Lange in the 1976 version).

Now, after months Down Under shooting action sequences in which Kong battles hordes of ferocious dinosaurs before he's captured (one of several changes Jackson is making from the original), Watts is in awe of the film's technical wizardry. "Peter is such a genius with special effects," she says, noting that her scenes with Andy Serkis (Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" films), who plays Kong, are especially cutting-edge. "They're filming us both at the same time, so all Andy's movements are matched up to mine."

In addition to Serkis' gorilla-shaped padded suit, to which digitized fur will be added, and scarily enhanced audio to simulate the ape's roar, the actor is bringing weeks of research to the role. "Andy went to Rwanda, where he studied and fed gorillas," Watts says. Her co-star is now so convincing as the love-besotted ape, even without digital enhancing, "you kind of forget you're working with a guy, not a real gorilla."

Cover and cover story photographs by George Lange for USA WEEKEND.
Hair by Robert Vetica, Magnet LA; makeup by Pati Dubroff, The Wall Group; clothing stylist: Anna Bingemann, Magnet LA.
Clothing credits -- Cover: Jacket by Yves Saint Laurent, top by Gucci, jeans by Subi. Page 6: Dress by Roland Mouret.