{"id":907682,"date":"2026-09-27T18:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T18:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/907682\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T18:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T18:58:11","slug":"naomi-watts-praises-husband-billy-crudup-for-menopause-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/907682\/","title":{"rendered":"Naomi Watts Praises Husband Billy Crudup for Menopause Support"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt felt like Naomi Watts<\/a> covered it all in a Zurich Film Festival<\/a> masterclass on Sunday afternoon: dreams, drama and, of course, the menopause.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe British star opened up with host Max Loong about struggling for around a decade auditioning in Los Angeles before she would go on to meet David Lynch<\/a> and star in his career-transforming Mulholland Drive<\/a>. Watts was speaking the day after a glitzy Zurich ceremony in which she accepted the fest\u2019s prestigious Golden Eye award for her latest feature, The Housewife.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe conversation began with Watts\u2019 childhood and acting aspirations. Her ambitions were made a little more complicated when Watts\u2019 mother moved the family from the U.K. to Australia when she was only a young teenager.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a bizarre way, meeting the late, great Lynch \u2014 whom Watts did an impeccable impression of, pretend cigarette and all \u2014\u00a0was almost like therapy for the actress, who landed that breakout role at the age of 31. She was worn down by Hollywood\u2019s faux interest in her talent and the fickle nature with which casting directors operated. \u201c[You\u2019d] line up and see 10 or 15 girls, running their lines, looking much better for the part than you do, and it was really a grind,\u201d Watts told the room.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat 10 years before I met David Lynch, I just became so locked up and I felt worthless,\u201d she continued. \u201cMy agent actually pulled me aside because she put together a reel with some of the work I\u2019d done in Australia \u2014\u00a0little bits of things \u2014\u00a0and she said, \u2018We need to have a heart-to-heart. Come in and talk to me because I don\u2019t understand why you\u2019re not getting these jobs.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatts was told by that agent: \u201c\u2018Honey, you\u2019re too intense. You\u2019re freaking people out.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Yeah, no shit. I\u2019m desperate. I\u2019m three months behind on my rent. I\u2019m getting evicted! They told me I wasn\u2019t funny last week. I\u2019m trying to be funny now. They told me I wasn\u2019t sexy. I\u2019m trying to be sexy!’\u201d she said, likely validating a lot of women in the room vying for a foot in the door. \u201cYou reshape yourself to try and read the tone of what is needed, and it becomes freaky. And I just couldn\u2019t be myself. I was either an extreme version of myself or a diluted version. I was further and further away from myself, and it took a genius like David Lynch to be able to see beyond all of that weirdness that I had built up and undo it and get to the real me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the Cannes Film Festival premiere of the beloved Mulholland Drive, in which Watts plays an aspiring actress who arrives in L.A. and befriends a car crash victim, she remembers sitting in the car with co-star Justin Theroux, about to hit the iconic red carpet, when a sentimental song came on the radio. \u201cThe crowds are there waiting, and the song changed to Cat Stevens\u2019 \u2018Morning Has Broken,\u2019 and this was the song that had played at my dad\u2019s funeral.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatts became teary at this point in the conversation, earning a raucous round of applause from the crowd. Her father, Peter Watts, a road manager and audio engineer who went on the road with Pink Floyd, died of an apparent heroin overdose when she was just seven years old. \u201cIt was always a very meaningful song, and I just remember turning to Justin and went, \u2018Oh my God, that song!\u2019 [\u2026] Thank God I wasn\u2019t alone in that car [and had] Justin because all I could think about was my mascara running down my [face]. He just grabbed my hand and he was like, \u2018Come on. Let\u2019s go. Let\u2019s do it.\u2019 I put my head up and off we went onto the red carpet, and it was wonderful. David was obviously very beloved and we just held on tight to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMulholland Drive is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, and made an international<\/a> superstar out of the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Watts. It was a modest commercial success, making around $20 million on a $15 million budget.<\/p>\n

\n\tTowards the end of the masterclass, Watts took a moment to talk about her menopause activism, revealing how her four-year-old menopause and wellness company, Stripes Beauty, came to be. \u201cMenopause has become a huge topic of conversations [and a] passion because I went into it early on in my life and had no clues about what was going on with my body and there was no open conversation,\u201d she said. \u201cOnce I talked about it with my partner, who\u2019s now my husband, and he was encouraging of it, I just thought: \u2018How about I just own this story? How about I get ahead of it? I\u2019m in on the joke that is not actually a joke, but why should we suffer?’\u201d Watts\u2019 goal was to inject normalcy into menopause, whether it\u2019s through \u201chumor, storytelling, just connectivity, or product solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe lauded her husband of three years, fellow actor Billy Crudup<\/a>, for being curious about menopause \u2014\u00a0and implored other men to replicate his openness. \u201cI was hiding in the bathroom trying to scratch off my estrogen patch, and he was like, \u2018Is everything okay?\u2019 And I told him what was going on, and I really was so nervous and thinking, \u2018Oh God, I bet he\u2019s not going to want to be with me now. He knows I\u2019m in menopause.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCrudup\u2019s reaction was quite the opposite. \u201cHe was like, \u2018Hold on a second. We\u2019re the same age, and that\u2019s great that you\u2019re taking care of yourself. Love science, love medicine. And why are you ashamed? That\u2019s fantastic. Thanks for telling me.\u2019 And so instantly, I felt, \u2018Oh my God, this is so sweet and generous and sexy!\u2019 Like, that just felt really intimate. And I felt safer than I\u2019d ever felt,\u201d continued Watts. \u201cAnd I told him that I wanted to create a company for women who are not clued in, and the company would be about hydration from scalp to vag.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatts comes to Zurich promoting The Housewife, directed by Ben Shirinian and co-starring Tye Sheridan, Michael Imperioli and Luke Evans. It is based on a true story and set in 1964 New York. When a young journalist tracks down a potential Nazi officer living secretly in Queens, he befriends the lead suspect\u2019s charming wife. But the investigation soon takes a disturbing turn.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer fellow Golden Eye recipients include John Turturro<\/a> and Tom Hiddleston<\/a> this year. The 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It felt like Naomi Watts covered it all in a Zurich Film Festival masterclass on Sunday afternoon: dreams,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,133349,447,98278,134,3389,475759,60097,475760,60991],"class_list":["post-907682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-billy-crudup","tag-celebrities","tag-david-lynch","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-mulholland-drive","tag-naomi-watts","tag-zurich-2026","tag-zurich-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}