Naomi Watts: 'Women in Their 50s are Doing Remarkable Things'

For fans of heart-clutching drama, Naomi Watts is your woman: she received two Academy Award nominations for her performances as a bereft mother in 21 Grams and as a doctor in the tsunami-disaster film The Impossible, and more recently, got an Emmy nod for portraying the exquisite, brittle, and tragic Babe Paley in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

She stars in the movie The Friend —with Bill Murray and a Great Dane.

At 56, she is also a kinda-newlywed (she married actor Billy Crudup in 2023), a mother of teenagers and, now, an advocate for women going through The Change. In her eye-opening new book Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause (January 2025), she is here to say that while many of us just accept quiet (and sometimes secret) suffering, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Her father died of an apparent heroin overdose when she was 7.

"I’m definitely drawn to stories about grief and loss, because I experienced it very early on in my life. I had this idea that one must suffer to be interesting and dynamic and strong and prove themselves in some way — which is absurd. My work is like my therapy."

Watts struggled with infertility (though she had two children with former partner Liev Schreiber).

"In my mid-30s, I learned I was in perimenopause. I was hanging my head in shame, and if I ever dared to speak about it or try to open the conversation with friends, I was met with nervous laughter or 'Don’t be silly, you are not menopausal, you are so young.' I went on hormone replacement therapy very early."

That experience turned her into an author — and a Hollywood agony aunt.

"I imagined my new book as a long, cozy chat on the couch with my girlfriend. That’s what I wanted. In my early 40s, I wished there was a funny, sexy, fact-filled book that would make me feel calmer, more soothed, more normal. It’s not all doom and gloom. I get a lot of questions — I think some people think of me as Miss Menopause now."

She immediately knew actor Billy Crudup was the one, and she married last year for the first time, at 54.

"We met at exactly the right time. Again, with getting older comes a certain level of calm and wisdom, and a willingness to sort of let go and throw yourself into things."