Naomi Watts

Wedding bells for Naomi Watts?

Naomi Watts is head over heels in love with her actor boyfriend, Liev Schreiber, to the point where friends are speculating the couple is planning to marry and start a family. Watts, 38, who attended the G'Day USA event in Los Angeles with Schreiber, left the room abuzz after giving a speech at the function in which she was openly emotional about her love for him. "She spoke about him in her speech, choking back tears and saying how much she values him in her life," a source from the US revealed. "He was also very gracious as Aussies were crowding around her table asking to get photos taken with her. He even took some of the photos for her fans, which was a nice touch." The couple, who met in mid-2005, reportedly had a few difficulties last year, but their relationship has bloomed to the point where Watts is seriously considering starting a family. Even the Australian consul-general, Innes Willox (who attended the US event), was getting in the spirit of celebrity speculation, questioning whether Watts and Schreiber could go one step further than Nicole Kidman, who first met Keith Urban at a similar G'Day LA event. "Maybe we could have gone a step better than just a meeting - maybe a proposal," he told our source, referring to the obvious glow between Watts and Schreiber. Watts, who provided invaluable support to Kidman during Urban's stint in rehab, has just returned to the US from London where she was filming Eastern Promises with Viggo Mortensen. Schreiber has just scored a recurring role in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation but he also appears in the coming film The Painted Veil alongside Watts and Edward Norton.

Golden Globes: Naomi Watts and Renee Zellweger Look Exactly the Same

Only one is just a tiny bit cuter, right? You decide which one. Watts came out to present the first of those mini-clips things that properly introduce the nominees for Best Motion Picture. After stumbling over her words quite a bit (who doesn't know how to pronouce Alejandro González Iñárritu's name?), clips from Babel swept across the screen. Watts looks good in a little sky blue number ... but then we lose her, only to watch Watts #2, er, Renee Zellweger, take the stage. It's at this point that technical difficulties began pissing Erik off (mainly, his computer sucks), and so he gets his sh*t together in time to spot Zellweger introducing the Hollywood Foreign Press -- golf clap Brad, golf clap. Zellweger looks kind of like Watts, only with a little hair thing going on, and that classic look of constipation ... Renee, go to the bathroom honey. Please. You're killing us here. Oh, and Happy Feet wins for Best Song for "The Song of the Heart," by Prince Rogers Nelson, aka Prince, aka He Who Was Formerly the Artist Formerly Known as Prince . No penguins showed up. Did we not tell you that. Mic check. Hello. Why does my computer hate me?

Naomi Watts, star of dark films such as ‘The Ring’ and ‘21 Grams,’ does double duty on ‘Painted Veil’

Naomi Watts has a sense of humor, not that you would know it from her resume.

Consider the horrors of "The Ring," the intensity of "21 Grams" and David Lynch's influence on "Mulholland Drive." Then add in her newest film, "The Painted Veil," based on W. Somerset Maugham's novel of betrayals, set amid a cholera-infested Chinese village. No laugh riots exist in that material. Watts said in a recent phone interview that she hasn't closed the book on comedies, but she doesn't receive many scripts in that genre. "I don't think I'm the first on their list," Watts said -- with a laugh -- of filmmakers' choices. "Sometimes people do say, 'What about a romantic comedy?' But I think it's so much harder to make a romantic comedy work. The good ones are very few and far between. "I don't know why, but I'm drawn to this darker stuff. I actually find it fun." Again, she's not waiting by the phone for comedy offers. But if a certain clarinet-playing auteur rang up, she would speak to him. "If Woody Allen called me and said, 'Come on, let's do something,'

well, you know, it's the quirkier stuff, in terms of comedy, that's much more interesting to me.

"If Woody Allen calls, I'd be pretty much sold right away." She will consider any film that connects with "some kind of truth," as in "The Painted Veil," in which she portrays a 1920s woman of infidelity and self-obsession opposite Edward Norton, her producing partner on the period piece. One truth, according to Watts: The movie is not a chick flick. It's a universal story, and men will identify with it, particularly in how would they deal with the couple's estrangement. "What would the men do if their wives had cheated on them in such a horrific way? Would you punish her? Would you forgive? Could you see yourself changing? It plays out all of those thoughts," she said. "And that's what is so beautiful about it, is that human beings can evolve and grow. No matter who we think we are, we can be better." She's passionate about the film, both in what it says to her as an artist and in its scope as a producer on such a large project. For example, shooting on location in the most remote parts of China was difficult but was deemed absolutely imperative for purposes of authenticity. She and Norton decided that the remarkably undisturbed Chinese countryside was an important character in the film. "You've never really seen that part of the world in such a lush way," she said, adding, "You can't exactly (fake) that in Hawaii, can you?"

Their location was beyond remote, Watts said. She described a two-hour trek from a main road, moving deeper and deeper into the valley country. "Just to give you an idea, it was right on a cliffside, and you're thinking, 'Oh my god, what if something happens. Can a helicopter get down here?' You know, your typical spoiled kind of thing," she said, again laughing. "But once you're there, your heart just explodes. You feel such joy, because every direction you look, it's just extraordinary." While the filming allowed a view of a land rarely exposed to the world, the filmmakers were allowed a view of a people rarely exposed to anyone outside their tiny community. Watts recalls working on one scene, over and over again, and the photographers were losing the necessary light to shoot. The director was asking the extras to perform. They wouldn't move. "Then our director (John Curran) is talking to our Chinese assistant director, who spoke three or four dialects, and he'd tell them again and again, and nothing. We figured out they just didn't know any of his dialects. "You just throw your hands up and say, 'That day's gone.' It was funny because these people, they had rarely even seen white people, much less a film crew."

Film Close-Up: Naomi Watts

"The Painted Veil" is a globe-trotting, 1920s romantic drama set in a mountainous Chinese landscape of mythic beauty. But to its star, 38-year-old Naomi Watts, the film is special in another way. It is the movie where she met her boyfriend, actor Liev Schreiber, although his role is small. In "The Painted Veil," Watts is a spoiled, rich London girl cheating on her doctor husband, played by Ed Norton. In revenge, he drags her to a remote village in China, where he is spearheading the effort to battle a deadly disease outbreak. In the screenplay, adapted from W. Somerset Maugham's novel, the bitter couple slowly comes together amid the turmoil of a Communist power struggle. Born in England and raised in Australia, Watts has appeared in films for 20 years, starting with her debut in "For Love Alone." But it took 15 years before she became an overnight sensation, with her performance in David Lynch's "Mulholland Dr." Starring roles in box office hits including "The Ring" and "King Kong" soon followed.

Q: Your character in "The Painted Veil" does things that you know the audience is going to dislike. How do you tell how far you can push the audience away, and still be able to reel them back in later?

A: Yes, well, you just have to commit to those moments, and all those beats were important. If you fall into the trap of thinking, "Oh, I must dilute this because the audience will lose interest in me, or my character," then that's death. What was so great about this character was her transformation. And yeah, she was irritating, self-obsessed and frivolous, but I kind of enjoyed that, you know? I enjoyed that she was caught up in that world of who's who and how one looks. It's not that she was a bad person, ever. It's just, that's the world she knew and she didn't get a chance to look into anything deeper than that. And then this crisis forces her into that process.

Q: Is it true that you were pushing this film off because you were exhausted after filming "King Kong"? What made you finally believe it was a role you had to take?

A: No! That's not quite accurate. I don't know who wrote that in the production notes but I will be speaking to them, ha ha. No, I was attached to this project for three or four years, and never lost any passion for it or belief in it. In fact, sometimes that's not the way things go when you've been attached to something for that long. But in this case, I always believed in it.

Q: So what happened?

A: What happened was, I came off of "King Kong," which was an eight-month shoot. I don't know if you've seen the film but it was physically intensive. It wasn't that I didn't want to do this project. I didn't want to work ever again, ha ha! I didn't know that my body could actually move from one film set right to another. So that's where I just thought, "Oh, can we hold off? Can you give me a chance to breathe?" And suddenly all the other elements were finally in place and they had to go, now. Yes, maybe it took some inspiring and maybe coercion - and it did - but once I was there, it was the right thing to do. And then I got my year off afterward.

Q: After all those years of being attached to this film, you needed some last-minute coercion to go do it?

A: The week before, I try to get out of every film, ha ha. I think it's fear. It is. And it's so weird, because I'm so convinced at the time that I can't do it and I must get out of it. And, like clockwork, I do that with

every project I end up doing.

Q: You definitely seem attracted to these darker kinds of roles. It is surprising that you have not yet gone for something lighter.

A: Yeah, I know. I try. I try to look for something light. Certain genres don't interest me, you know, like the romantic comedy genre. I mean, I don't know. Maybe just the good ones don't come to me because I'm not exactly the go-to girl for the laugh factor, let's face it. But, yeah, I find the darker stuff fun. It never ceases to interest me. And if it's based in truth, that's what gets me going, whereas a romantic comedy doesn't seem to ever be based in anything truthful.

Q: That sounds like the fear factor again. You would probably be good.

A: Do you think? Well, maybe, yeah. I definitely can admit I've had a lot of fear about comedy. Back in the days where I was running around town auditioning for things, some of those things were sitcoms. I was told repeatedly that I was not funny, heh. So you tend to believe, when you're not in your best place, what anyone says. But no, the comedy that I like is more the obscure stuff. I can't do the cutesy thing.

Naomi Watts | Naomi Watts 2

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