Hoovering up the chances

GLANCING at Naomi Watts’ curriculum vitae, one could be forgiven for presuming that the 43-year-old actress has a penchant for American political intrigue.

Less than a year after the release of her true-life FBI film Fair Game, Watts now stars in J Edgar, a weighty biopic that covers the life of the controversial FBI founder J Edgar Hoover.

“Who knew that little old me, from England and Australia, would be telling stories about American history?” asks Watts, who plays Hoover’s loyal secretary Helen Gandy. “It’s such a great thing but I did not know much about this story, that’s for sure. I knew a little about Hoover, but nothing about Helen Gandy. It was a real history lesson for me.”

Gandy worked as Hoover’s secretary for 54 years and the FBI director, played on screen by an excellent Leonardo DiCaprio, described her as “indispensable”. She was the keeper of his secrets, and a vital support, during his controversial tenure at the Bureau. Her loyalty extended beyond his lifetime.

“We’re all human beings,” smiles Watts. “Everyone makes mistakes. Hoover made a lot of mistakes, and hurt a lot of people, including himself, through his paranoia and need to control things, which was pretty extreme.”

The actress, however, says she refuses to judge either Gandy or Hoover. “I think me on a normal day, I hope that I’m aware of the mistakes I’m making. And they will be made. Everyone makes mistakes, and hopefully you learn from them.”

Looking at Watts’s career, she seems to have made precious few mistakes, bringing to the screen a succession of interesting characters, though she is something of a late bloomer. Her career began in Australia, with roles on soap operas like the perennial favourite Home and Away, before her international breakthrough came a decade later with David Lynch’s 2001 thriller Mulholland Drive.

She followed that with the likes of 21 Grams (2003), for which she scooped an Oscar nomination, and The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) — along with 2007’s brooding hit Eastern Promises, from director David Cronenberg, and 2008’s Funny Games, a psychological chiller from Michael Haneke.

Even when working on more mainstream films, like The Ring (2002) or Peter Jackson’s $500 million box office monster King Kong (2005), Watts invariably summons an intriguing performance.

In 2009 Forbes cited her as the best-value actress in Hollywood, her three films prior to their survey having made $44 for every $1 she was paid.

In recent years she’s worked with directors like Jim Sheridan, on Dream House, and Woody Allen, on You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. J Edgar, meanwhile, sees her link up with no lesser light than Clint Eastwood. “The main reason that I wanted to do J Edgar was that working with Clint was kind of a dream for a long time,” she says. “The similarities with people like David Lynch and Woody Allen, the ones who have been around a little longer, is that they know what they want and they’re quick to get it. Clint is very impressive.”

The one downside to the J Edgar shoot, she concedes, was her time in make-up. Watts plays Gandy over an extended period and some scenes in the movie required her to spend more than five hours in the make-up chair.

“There’s nothing fun about sitting still for five and a half hours,” she smiles. “As happy as you are to be there, it really is a test on your patience.”

Sitting still is not one of Watts’s fortes; as a busy working mother with a husband in the same industry, and two young boys, she is always on the go. Watts married actor Liev Schreiber in 2005, and her boys, Sasha and Sammy, are four and three years old, respectively.

Watts was born in Kent, in England, her parents separating when she was still young. Her father, Peter Watts, who was a road manager for Pink Floyd (the sound of his laughter can be heard on Dark Side Of The Moon), passed away from an apparent heroin overdose when she was just seven, and her antiques dealer/actress mother moved the family to Anglesey.

“I have great memories of Wales. There was always a dampness, good smells and lovely stone architecture,” she says of her Celtic connections. “We had a great place, a small house with a huge barn, and my grandma had goats in it, and we’d play hide-and-seek and build fireworks, normal things that kids don’t do these days. Now it’s all virtual animals.”

She moved to Sydney when she was 14, and was a classmate of Nicole Kidman. “I started my career in Australia although my epiphany with acting came much earlier, in Britain, watching my mother in My Fair Lady,” she recalls. “I was about five and I remember thinking ‘Wow, that’s fantastic’. I kept waving at her but she wasn’t waving back, which was puzzling.

“I kept bugging her throughout the performance and eventually she gave me a wink, something to show me that she was still my mum.” She smiles. “And that was it. Once I understood, I thought that acting would be something that I’d like to do.”

* J Edgar is released on January 20