It’s hard to imagine a world without Naomi Watts. She is the face of choice for authentic independent filmmaking, with gritty roles in films like The Assassination of Richard Nixon or the grim autopsy of marriage gone bad, We Don’t Live Here Anymore. She is the glam blonde in the most talked about blockbusters, the disturbing remake of cult Japanese horror, The Ring, for instance, or this season’s monster hit, Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Be it plumbing the depths of hell on earth, as a mother who loses her husband and both her children in one blow ( 21 Grams), or playing it for laughs whilst sending up gender roles as a calendar girl turned feminist (I Heart Huckabees), her range is limitless. Yet it was a mere 4 years ago that a 32-year-old Naomi Watts ‘arrived’. She turned up, a starry eyed ingénue, straight off the bus into la la land’s underbelly thanks to David Lynch’s Mullholland Drive in 2001. With a golden bob, big blue peepers, pearls and a twin set, she looked like the perfect Hitchcock victim, yet within a few scenes had gone from kitsch stereotype to husky voiced vamp to lesbian revenger. In an early scene her character Betty naively gushes her desire to be both a great actress and a movie star, something that Naomi Watts herself has more than made good on. Like any true covergirl, she can make an entrance, as the Australian actress did turning up hand-in-hand with girlhood friend Nicole Kidman to a premiere. Yet beneath the sparkle of designer frocks and red carpets, breathes gutsy substance: the actress of her generation, a female counterpoint to Sean Penn, Mark Ruffalo, or any other ‘great character actor’ you care to pit her against. You get the feeling this is one woman who has lived. A hippy childhood in England, was followed by an adolescence in Australia, a brief spell modelling in Japan, even fashion editing an Aussie mag prior to that long ten years spent gestating in Hollywood guff, had given her plenty of time to taste life, learn her craft and mature. Today those experiences, from the most stomach pummelling set backs to the big payoff of the past few years, are fused into soul music on screen. Photographed here by her close brother Ben, as Naomi gears up to unleash pain and pathos in the face of a mountain-sized monkey, we ask what’s it all about?

i-D: I hear you got the role in King Kong after having dinner with Peter Jackson in London…

Naomi Watts: It was mainly a social evening, but we spoke a little bit about the film. It felt fantastic to be offered the part, I had never done one of these movies, and I had never done an event movie. People think that I must not like them because a lot of my choices have been a bit more obscure, but I do love these movies, if they are done well.

Before she becomes King Kong’s love interest, Anne Darrow is a struggling actress, which is something I guess you can identify with, before your turn of fortune in the past few years?

Sure, I know what it is to struggle. But the struggle that Ann Darrow has, in this version in particular, is nothing near to my tiny little thing. Mine was a ten-year uphill struggle and those things definitely inform you, the rejection, but hers is much more extreme.

Your first expected break was supposed to be ten years ago in Tank Girl. How do you go about building your confidence, as a young actress, after a film like that flops?

I don’t know, you just have to be resilient. It’s not even just that, there’s so many other rejections or disappointments. A hundred auditions before you get your next job, stuff like that hardens you and makes you less sensitive. It’s weird. The disappointment gets bigger as you get older, and you get more cynical. It’s like it unheals an old wound – the scab keeps coming off.

Obviously, it was Mulholland Drive and working with David Lynch, that restored your faith in the acting world. Do you still regard it, as this single turning point?

Yes, but it’s hard to imagine just one thing can make such a dramatic turn for you. It was way beyond what I ever dreamed of. David Lynch took a chance on me, and at the time, I was very much at a low point and had resigned myself to believing l’d just be a working actor. If I worked once a year, that would be great, and I would probably survive off 40 to 50,000 dollars a year. I was quite reconciled in that.

Although it was a lucky break, didn’t you feel a new weight of expectation?

What I say though, is, with every problem solved, a new one opens up. The pressure of making the right decisions for myself has gotten bigger, and I’m still trying to trust my instinct. But, if you become acclaimed at anything, whatever your job is, people are going to be looking at you more closely. But you’ve got to keep doing what you love to do – you’re not just going to quit because of the pressure.

But how do you cope with the added pressure of the media spotlight?

I don’t have it as much as some actresses. Occasionally, after a holiday weekend, when I’ve been out of town, there might be someone waiting outside the house. They stake you out in their cars, but I know the cars now. if it’s something you really don’t want to be followed to, like the dog park, you end up getting into a bit of a game of chase, and you try to find creative ways of getting rid of them [paparazzi], its kind of a drag, but most of the time nobody knows who lam. I can pretty much still go to the supermarket. | don’t particularly pop out of a crowd. Unless I’m done up!

In some respects you have a certain degree of anonymity because you’re not typecast. Is that something you’re aware of?

Yes, Mulholland Drive was the starting point for that. After that film, people were open to not just casting me as the sweet girl. And that allowed me to go for the most demented and depraved roles too. That’s the fun you want – to push the limits.

With that in mind, which of your recent roles, have you personally connected with the most?

I’d say 21 Grams. I did a lot of research, more than l’ve ever dome, for that role. It was an interesting finn to me, because it’s so much about life and death. Most people have lost somebody, and I lost my father when I was seven-years-old. For me, in terms of my own psychological journey and my father’s death, I thought, “My God, I was so young!” I didn’t fully realize the feelings I was having. It really helped me understand some of the things I hed gone through. So it was a very cathartic role for me.

With King Kong were you worried about doing the “maiden in distress’ thing in a giant monkey movie?