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4 Naomi Watts: I'm not a princess all the way
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 NAOMI Watts - dressed from tip to toe in Armani, wearing the designer's stylish dark blue dress and chic shoes - looks as though she's ready to step on to the catwalk. The reality though is that the star would rather curl back into the comfort of her bed.A victim of jet-lag, 36 year-old Naomi had arrived in New York on the previous night's flight from China and only managed three and a half hours sleep before getting up to spend the day discussing the biggest film role of her career.
Her energy levels are impressive as she talks about becoming the latest actress to play iconic screen heroine Ann Darrow, the would-be film star in the latest, most expensive and scariest version of King Kong.
But it's not so surprising that Naomi is able to stave off jet-lag's waves of tiredness. After all she proved to have the right stuff to cope with the demands of an exhausting six month shoot in New Zealand as Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson fulfilled a life-long ambition with his $130 million take on King Kong.
The blonde actress laughs when I suggest that King Kong has been her most physically demanding role. “Without question! And I will never be up for it again. I'm too old for it,” says Naomi as she kicks off her Armani shoes and folds her bare feet into the lotus position on the sofa.
“I'm not trying to pull a sympathy card here, I didn't quite realise going into it - not that it would have stopped me - the extent of the physical demands. Yes, I thought there would be running, chasing, jumping...But there was a period throughout the six months shoot, and in the last three months especially, which was all me and Kong, where my body was in a state of absolute exhaustion.”
The going got so tough that Naomi had a heart-to-heart with Peter Jackson in which the slender actress confessed that she was becoming concerned that the film's physical demands were proving to be too much for her. “We were doing days back to back and weeks back to back of really taxing stuff. There was a point towards the last bit when I went to Peter and I said...'I don't know if I can do this. I feel so frustrated because I want to and my body is not as good as my will.' But I got through it. Your body just keeps going and then you collapse at the end of it.
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Throughout her time in New Zealand, where she was working alongside a cast that includes Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Andy Serkis and Jamie Bell, Naomi suffered cuts and bruises on a daily basis. Following the previous night's filming where she was dragged by natives to Kong's sacrificial altar, Naomi rolled up a trouser leg to reveal a series of livid cuts and bruises.She accepted that rough and tumble as part of the territory in portraying a classic action girl but there was one bad accident when Naomi thought her luck had run out. It happened when she went tumbling head over heels to land backwards six feet down a ditch.
“I fell with quite a lot of force - and I was jammed up in a hole. My legs were up in the air because the ditch was only about that wide [pulls her hands a short distance apart] and so I fell back backwards into it. I had a couple of seconds when I was out and because I couldn't move I thought I may be paralysed...I may have done something really bad. I was physically trapped in that position,” she says.
“But after a few seconds I was able to move and they slowly got me out. But that was the moment when I thought is this it! I was lucky and thought thanks goodness for my yoga because that had made me supple and agile.”
This former model from Shoreham, Kent has had an interesting trajectory that now sees her as the star of the year's biggest movie. She moved to Australia when she was 14 years old and then appeared in a series of big screen miss fires such as Tank Girl and Flirting before making her break through in Mulholland Drive. Since then there has been more success with the Ring horror hits but nothing that was remotely like the big scale, big screen wonder of King Kong.
“It is very different from anything I have done, obviously,” she agrees. “And that was one of the great lures for me. I had never done one of these big event movies. There are special effects, there is action, humour, love, tragedy....it crosses a wide spectrum...and it is fantasy as well. So it was quite new territory for me but it's worth exploring.”
You wonder how, as the only girl in the King Kong cast, Naomi managed to find time for feminine things such as maintaining a healthy regime and protecting her complexion, especially when she was working on such a rigorous schedule. Naomi's response to that is simplicity itself...”Yoga and you drink tons of water, that's the be all and end all. I constantly reminded myself to keep drinking water. And you have just got to try and get as much rest as possible.”
She agrees that the King Kong schedule meant that there was no time for anything other than work, eat and sleep. “You get rest because you just don't do anything else at the end of the day. It's not like you have a life to go home to. You commit yourself to that six month period,” she says, pausing to stress that this doesn't mean that she saw her King Kong experience as any sort of ordeal. “There are people out there with much more difficult lives; this is a pretty easy life,” she says. Just before the world premiere of King Kong in New York, Naomi will finish working in Beijing, where she's filming The Painted Veil which is based on a Somerset Maugham story. Upon reflection she concedes that it feels that this latest project has come just a bit too soon after King Kong.
”I didn't realise that King Kong was going to be as draining as it was,” she says before going on to admit that after doing a series of films that include Mulholland Drive, The Ring and King Kong, back to back she's seriously considering taking a break. “I'm getting to the point where I'm like...ok, time for other things. Now I want a good run of time off.”
She nods when asked whether working so hard for so long makes her afraid that she'll miss out on life. “Yes. I am. I don't like to make sweeping, declarative statements but I have been thinking about that a lot - and feeling a bit all consumed by the work and feeling less excited by it because I'm possibly missing out on other things.
“So if you get to a place where you start resenting these people who make you show up at places that's not good. So to avoid that I've kind of made a vow to myself to really hunker down and pay attention to other things in my life and not work so much.”
She laughs when asked whether `other things' might mean that she's thinking about motherhood. Is that what we are talking about? “Yes. that's what we are talking about,” she says, chuckling...“It's one of many things...”
While Naomi plans to take a break from acting quite soon, she's anxious that this should not be misinterpreted. “Then that becomes the title of every article...She's quitting! This [acting] will always hold my interest but I just need some time off, to slow down and not keep raising the bar and operating less on a survival instinct and more on a purer one.”
She adds that she is at a good stage of her career that allows her to have time away from the cameras, and it's clear that Naomi has also given some thought to what might occur when she decides to pick up from where she left off. “If it goes it away and I want it back then it is up to me to try and re-invent it,” she says.
Filming King Kong in New Zealand finished in April and so what did Naomi do next...she obviously hadn't got the jungle out of her system and so she headed to East Africa to go on safari! “But it was not a holiday, it was like boot camp. It was amazing, being out there in the wilderness and seeing the animals. We did have some time in tents and you would hear the lions and hyenas at night. I loved all that.”
But doesn't she like five star comforts? “Yeah,” smiles Naomi. “But I like to mix it up, I'm not a princess all the way. It's not how I was brought up.”
While she's not afraid to rough it, either on location in New Zealand or on safari in Africa, Naomi also got a kick out of some of the fantastic 1930s costumes that were designed for her in the movie. “They are beautiful. The 1930s were such a wonderful period for women, really celebrating the woman's body. The costumes were easy to wear, they were just so feminine.”
She wasn't so sure of the hats that she had to wear as Ann Darrow. “I'm not a big hat person. I wear a cap every now and again or a hat for the sun but I always feel a bit showy in hats for some reason. But the costumes and the wig - it was a wig, it wasn't my hair - just help you get into the era. They are little tools that help you get closer to the character.”
What also was invaluable in getting her into her character was Andy Serkis who doubled for the computerised created Kong in much the same way as he portrayed Gollum in Lord Of The Rings. Naomi had always said that the toughest part of filming would be acting out an extraordinary relationship with a 25 foot gorilla whom she had to imagine being there. Now, with all the green screen filming in the can, she pays tribute to the way that Andy Serkis made those scenes so much easier for her.
“My big emotional moments were mostly with Andy Serkis and so it did feel like I was looking at the absolute truth. He is an extraordinary man and actor who makes you transcend all disbelief and you are connecting with a soul. So whether he was hairy and 25 feet tall or whether he was himself you still felt like you were there.”
Naomi now lives in her newly bought New York home with her dogs too....a Yorkshire terrier and a Cocker spaniel....and says, surprisingly perhaps, that she doesn't expect the success of King Kong to intrude upon her privacy. “The great fortunate thing is that I never get recognised. I think I look very different on film than I do in real life,” she says.
“I'm a little bit dressed up today but if I am going out normally I just get on with my business. If I want my coffee in the morning and haven't had a shower I'll still go out. I have always been a five minute girl - except when I am doing something. I am always surprised if anyone recognises me. I have had paparazzi where they find out where you live and that's a bummer. But they don't know where they live right now.”
It's time for Naomi to leave but before she does, she reveals that she's just as thrilled about the prospect of seeing the completed King Kong as the rest of the movie going world.
“I have great feelings for the whole King Kong experience and the connections I made with people...friends for life....so there is that. And I have a degree of excitement to see the movie because there is so much of it that happened on the day that I have no idea about. This is not just an event movie; this is a love story, emotions, action, effects...that's why - all things going well - it should have a great place out there in the world because it really does appeal to the broad demographic. So it is just as exciting for me as any other audience member.”
Interview: John Millar
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