The 'Infinite Storm' actress explains how her work as an actor has helped ease her struggle to cope with her pain after her dad passed away when she was just a little girl.
- Jan 23, 2024
AceShowbiz - Naomi Watts will "never" fully recover from the death of her father. The 55-year-old actress was just seven years old when her dad Peter - who was a sound engineer for Pink Floyd - died aged 31 from an apparent overdose, and she admitted her work continues to help her deal with the grief.
"The grief never goes away but playing [different roles in movies] you find new ways of understanding it," she told Marie Claire Australia magazine.
"Still to this day as a 55-year-old woman I wish I'd witnessed what it was like to have a father to speak to at various times in my life... I wish that he'd been there to pat me on the back when I've had successful moments or complex moments that I've been troubled by."
Reflecting on her early loss, she previously explained how she is still "grappling" with not having her father around almost five decades later. Back in 2021, she told Vogue Australia, "Having grown up losing my dad at a very early age, I think that's a story I know well; it's still sorting itself out at the ripe age of 52...Through that, you lose a part of yourself … you feel like you're not fully formed in a way."
Meanwhile, her mother Miv - who split from Peter when Naomi was four years old - noted while his death "left scars" and "was a shock," it made her daughter "determined." She told Daily Mail Australia, "His death made Naomi incredibly determined. It had a profound effect on her, as it did on the entire family. It's a terrible thing to happen to anyone, especially at that age when she needed her dad. We had no inkling he was using heroin at all."
