{"id":854131,"date":"2026-09-20T08:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T08:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/854131\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T08:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T08:10:13","slug":"naomi-watts-dedicates-donostia-award-to-david-lynch-i-miss-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/854131\/","title":{"rendered":"Naomi Watts Dedicates Donostia Award to David Lynch: ‘I Miss You’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBritish star Naomi Watts<\/a> dedicated her Donostia Award to the late, great David Lynch<\/a> on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

\n\tWatts picked up San Sebasti\u00e1n Film Festival\u2019s most prestigious honor before a screening of her latest feature, The Housewife. She was introduced by J.A. Bayona<\/a>, the Spanish filmmaker who directed Watts in 2012\u2019s The Impossible, which would earn the actress her second Oscar nomination.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNaomi, I want to thank you for having trusted that young director who was scared to death,\u201d said Bayona, who spoke touchingly about their time shooting the project, based on a real story from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. \u201cFor being the best travel companion I\u2019ve ever had, and for teaching me something that, today, I\u2019m still looking [for] every time I start working in front of a new actor. I admire you deeply, but above all, I love you. And tonight I can also say that I am fulfilling a dream, a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatts was emotional as she came to collect the award and thanked Bayona for his kind words. \u201cShooting in Spain with incredible crews, getting to know the Thai community, so many full, brilliant memories, and I loved it all, the whole experience, even the hard stuff,\u201d she said about The Impossible, which grossed over $198 million at the global box office upon its release. \u201cEven doing 30 takes in the water tank, submerged,\u201d she laughed, shouting out her co-star Tom Holland, who made his live-action debut in the film aged 15. \u201cTom Holland called it the best water park he ever went to. I called it pure pain!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Briton continued that it \u201cwasn\u2019t an easy trajectory\u201d making a name for herself in Hollywood. \u201cThere was so much rejection. A lot of people telling me I wasn\u2019t going to make it,\u201d she said. After 10 years of back-to-back rejections, everything changed when she met her Mulholland Drive director, David Lynch. \u201c[He] saw me, and all those wounds from all that rejection now appeared as growth. He gave me the role that you couldn\u2019t even dream for. He really just changed my life. He gave me a different understanding of what it meant to act, to trust instinct, to embrace uncertainty, and to not be afraid of the strange or the unexplained. But more than that, he believed in something in me before I fully believed in myself, and that is a gift that you never forget. So tonight, I do really feel like this award is very much about David.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatts, now 57, also added that she is grateful, \u201cas a woman of my age, despite what I was told at 31 when I was launching Mulholland Drive \u2014\u00a0that it\u2019d be all dried up and finished at the age of 40 \u2014\u00a0I\u2019m grateful beyond words to be part of shifting that narrative,\u201d she beamed. Her rallying cry continued: \u201cWe need to see ourselves. Women are consumers of films and storytelling too. We want to see ourselves reflected on screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter thanking festival organizers, Watts vowed to the applauding audience: \u201cI still have lots more in me and I\u2019m still reaching for the stars. So thank you for giving me the privilege of doing what I love to do. And David Lynch,\u201d she added, holding up her Donostia Award, \u201cI miss you!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Housewife, directed by Ben Shirinian and co-starring Tye Sheridan, Michael Imperioli, and Luke Evans, 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\tOn honoring Watts, the festival said she combines \u201cindependent films with big productions on both the big and the small screen.\u201d Her first Oscar nomination came through Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s 21 Grams (2003).<\/p>\n

\n\tShe achieved international fame thanks to Mulholland Drive (2001), but has also worked with filmmakers including Peter Jackson (King Kong), David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises), Clint Eastwood (J. Edgar), Michael Haneke (Funny Games), Audrey Diwan (Emmanuelle), Noah Baumbach (While We\u2019re Young) and Rodrigo Garc\u00eda, with whom she came to San Sebasti\u00e1n in 2009 to close the official selection out of competition with Mother & Child.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 2026 San Sebasti\u00e1n International<\/a> Film Festival runs Sep. 18-26 and kicked off with a Donostia Award for Werner Herzog on Friday<\/a>, before a screening of Fatih Akin\u2019s Ghost Song<\/a>. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with outgoing festival director Jos\u00e9 Luis Rebordinos about his legacy and taking a political stance here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British star Naomi Watts dedicated her Donostia Award to the late, great David Lynch on Saturday night. Watts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":854132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,96187,88,2091,360711,26072,349624,102281],"class_list":["post-854131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-david-lynch","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-j-a-bayona","tag-naomi-watts","tag-san-sebastian-2026","tag-san-sebastian-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}