That was actress Naomi Watts explaining to Parade magazine how she related to her latest role in new movie The Book of Henry, where she plays a divorced single mom raising two young sons, one of them a genius. “It just spoke to me,” she says. “It felt like a fable, about how to keep a family together.”
Watts, who now co-parents her two sons with former partner Liev Schreiber, also talked to Parade about how a stripped-down gig led to her longtime friendship with fellow actress Nicole Kidman, and how hard it is to make her native British accent sound American.
Here’s some:
In real life, she’s co-parenting her own two sons, Sasha, 9, and Kai, 8, with her former partner, actor Liev Schreiber. “They ask really intense questions, like, ‘Who was the first person to ever be on the Earth?’ and ‘Who was the mummy of the mummy of the mummy of the mummy?’ It sometimes just knocks me over, the deep level of thinking they go through.”
H
er kids also give her a hard time whenever she tries to rehearse an “American” accent for a role. “They’re like, ‘Don’t speak like that!’ They just want you to be yourself.” She has particular trouble with r sounds. Sometimes I overcompensate. That’s one Kai always busts me on. He’s like, ‘Mom, it’s not arrrrr!’”
She commiserates with fellow actress Nicole Kidman, whom she met some 30 years ago—when they both were auditioning in bikinis for a TV commercial. “I was talking to Nicole about it. We were saying, ‘Why doesn’t it get any easier? It almost gets harder. How is that possible?’”