Naomi Watts, Feeling the Fear
Terror Remake Lures Actress

By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 14, 2008

Naomi Watts feels guilty.

That, at least, is the reaction the actress says she had when she first watched "Funny Games," the 1997 film she has just remade shot-for-shot with its original director, Michael Haneke (see review, Page 37).

It's not exactly that she feels bad about doing yet another rehash of an old movie. Watts has famously appeared in updates of "The Ring" and "King Kong" and is scheduled to star in a new take on Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," due out next year. "I do feel slightly guilty about that," she says. "But you know what? It's perhaps because there's such a lack of good ideas now."

No, Watts's sense of culpability comes from something else. To her, Haneke's hyper-violent, self-referential drama about a family terrorized by a pair of psychopaths points an accusing, though well-deserved, finger at the modern movie fan's fascination with cinematic violence.

"It made me think about what I'm guilty of as an audience member," she says. "That when a set of brains hits the wall, I'm punching my fist in the sky at certain times in movies."

Known primarily for roles in "Mulholland Dr.," "21 Grams" and other examples of what she calls "dark and twisted movies," the 39-year-old actress also admits to another pang of conscience. Not about being a consumer of the macabre, but about being a creator. "I'm not in the bright and cheery ones," she admits with a laugh.

The problem with Haneke's earlier movie? It was in German. That, coupled with the fact that the director's intended audience was always American -- violence, after all, is Hollywood's bread and butter -- is why Watts says she jumped at the chance to give the film an English-language spin, one that would more easily strike its target.

Okay, maybe not "jumped."

"I was afraid it wouldn't land well with the American audience," says Watts, a British-born emigre to Australia who now lives stateside. She recalls that she wouldn't commit to the part without first seeking advice from such mentors as her "21 Grams" director, Alejandro Gonz¿les I¿¿rritu. "All the directors I respected said: 'You have to work with this man. He's a genius.' "

In the end, she felt so strongly about Haneke's critique of celluloid sadism that she didn't just star in the film: She also executive-produced it. "It's a piece that gets under your skin," she says.

As for who had final say, Watts says there was never a clash of egos between the film's writer-director and its star-producer: "I was not the boss. Definitely not." In fact, one of the few times she can remember Haneke even coming to her for advice involved what, for many actresses, would be a concession to the very exploitation Haneke's film is meant to criticize.

Watching the original version, Watts says, she felt uncomfortable when actress Susanne Lothar puts her slip back on after the bad guys force the heroine to take off her clothes. As Watts told Haneke: "I have to say that was one of the only false moments in the film, where I just felt like it was a little bit contrived that she has a slip on. It took me out of the movie for one second. It made me think, 'Oh, she didn't want to show her body or something. She wanted to hide a little bit.' "

Yes, Haneke told her, that was a matter of some discussion, even while making the earlier film. So, how would she feel about not having her slip on?

"I said, 'To be honest, I think it would help me to feel the fear.' "

It's an answer that says something about the actress's enduring attraction to the dark, even naked, side of human emotion.

Attraction? For Watts, it's a full-on fascination. To explore the dark side, she says, is to embrace it. "Then, perhaps, it helps us understand it. The more we know about it in others, the less alone we feel."