Naomi Unfiltered

The Australian actor talks marriage, motherhood and becoming the poster woman for menopause

- By Angela Mollard. Photographed by David Roemer

By her own admission, Naomi Watts is a late bloomer. She didn’t land her breakout role in the David Lynch classic Mulholland Drive until she was 33, or give birth to her two children (Sasha and Kai) until she was aged 38 and 40. As for marriage, she got hitched for the first time, to actor Billy Crudup, only last year, at age 54.

Having waited so long for what many consider important milestones, it was therefore discombobulating, not to mention upsetting, to find herself battling a challenging life event years ahead of her friends and colleagues.

The English-born, Australian-raised actor was 36 and trying to get pregnant when tests revealed she was nearing menopause. “I practically fell off my chair,” she recounts. “I’m being told I’m close to menopause when I’m just feeling ready to get pregnant. How can those things live together at once?”

Amid the distress of contemplating not being able to have children, along with the onset of menopause symptoms, Watts vaguely remembered her mother, Myfanwy, telling her she’d also gone through menopause early. “I left the [doctor’s] office in pieces and rang my mum and said, ‘What the hell? How come you didn’t tell me more?’”

It turns out that her mother went through menopause at 45 but had started having symptoms years earlier. Myfanwy hadn’t discussed it, she told her daughter, because her own mother hadn’t had those conversations with her.

Watts was incredulous that women were effectively in the dark. “It was clear to me that there was this code of silence,” she says. “Aren’t we all headed here at some point? Why is there no available conversation or proper education on this?”