Naomi Watts Almost Quit Acting Before Joining David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’

Naomi Watts Almost Quit Acting Before Joining David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’

Naomi Watts said on Tuesday that she almost quit acting before David Lynch cast her in Mulholland Drive.

“He was very instrumental to me. Even being in America, I wouldn’t have stayed had I not have met David Lynch,” Watts said during an appearance on Tuesday morning’s Live! With Kelly and Mark, with Anderson Cooper filling in for co-host Mark Consuelos.

Watts went on to explain that she met Lynch — who died last week at age 78 — after a decade of trying to find work in Hollywood. “The chips were down,” she said. “I was literally alienating people…making them uncomfortable, like, ‘I need a job, I need a job,’ in fact, so much so that my agent at the time said, ‘You’re too intense. You’re making people uncomfortable.’ I’m like, yeah, ‘I need a job. I need to work.’”

When Watts auditioned for Lynch’s 2001 film, she said the writer-director had “a very different way of casting,” continuing: “He sat me down, and he just looked me in the eyes and asked me questions. And, most of the time I was like, ‘How do I get out of your way? How do I speed this up? I’m sure I’m not right,’ because I just had that programming: I’m not funny; I’m not sexy; I’m too old; I’m too this, too that. He just saw me and was able to sort of lift these veneers.”

Watts played Betty Elms and Diane Selwyn in Mulholland Drive. Lynch earned an Oscar nomination for best director for the film, and the actress said he went on to become “a real mentor as a friend.” Earlier this week, Watts wrote on Instagram that “it wasn’t just his art that impacted me – his wisdom, humor and love gave me a special sense of belief in myself I’d never accessed before.”