At the 74th edition of the San Sebastián Festival, Naomi Watts received the Donostia Award choosing to dedicate it to David Lynch, the director who with Mulholland Drive radically changed the course of her career. The prize was presented to the actress and producer by J.A. Bayona, who in 2012 had directed her in The Impossible.
“Receiving a career award feels a little strange when you sense you are still in the middle of the journey, or even that you have just begun”, Watts began, then returning to the difficult years that preceded her meeting with Lynch. After a long series of rejections, in 2001 came Betty Elms, the protagonist of Mulholland Drive: “All the wounds caused by rejection suddenly appeared as growth. It gave me the role you could not even dream of. David changed my life”.
A artistic relationship that, in the actress’s words, went far beyond that single film. “He gave me a different understanding of what acting means: trusting instinct, embracing uncertainty, not being afraid of the strange or the inexplicable. But above all he believed in something inside me before I fully believed in it myself. It’s a gift that is not forgotten”. Watts then dedicated the Donostia Award to the director, who passed away in January 2025: “This award concerns him to a large extent. David, I miss you”.
Naomi Watts: “The Joy of Being an Actress”
During the ceremony, the British actress (who will turn 58 on the 28th of this month) also recalled some of the other directors who have marked her career, from Michael Haneke to David Cronenberg, from Peter Jackson to Alejandro González Iñárritu, without forgetting all those who work on a film set and “make the magic of cinema possible”. A craft that continues to fascinate her precisely because of its unpredictability: “You can prepare for everything and then something unforeseen happens and suddenly you are alive. You spend your life trying to inhabit other people and, somehow, along the way you discover more about yourself. This, for me, is the joy of being an actress”.
J.A. Bayona: “A Dream Come True”
Particularly personal was also J.A. Bayona‘s speech, who described the presentation of the Donostia Award to Watts as “a dream come true”. The Spanish director recalled the collaborative work on the set of The Impossible and, in particular, a scene in which María, the character played by the actress, is rescued after being swept by the tsunami.
Watts found herself next to two elderly Thai women who were not professional actresses and, according to Bayona’s memory, gradually stopped following the script, letting the situation guide her until she burst into inconsolable tears. “There were no more characters, only a devastated woman seeking comfort in two strangers”, the director recounted. A moment that would also change his own approach to cinema and directing actors. “That force of nature appears when Naomi trusts”. The ceremony was accompanied by the screening of The Housewife, Ben Shirinian’s directorial debut, to whom Watts offered one of the thanks in her speech. Here below, instead, the trailer for Mulholland Drive.
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