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\"I grew up in a family that we're all obviously very artistic and I knew very early on that I couldn't paint -- and yet everyone else could, not just my nuclear family, but the aunts and cousins on both sides. And I remember once coming home with a really great picture that I'd drawn at school and no one believed that it was really me.\" Watts said.

She was a girl who spent her childhood loving theater, but she didn't think it \"counted.\"

“I knew that I would enjoy being in school plays and things, but I didn't know that was going to lead me to some kind of artistic career,\" she said. \"It wasn't until much later that I understood that I had something that worked for me and made me feel like I did have artistry in my blood so to speak.\"

The Australian actress had her first major film role in John Duigan’s 1991 coming of age film \"Flirting\" alongside good friend, and fellow Aussie, Nicole Kidman. For the ten years that followed, she became a chameleon.

A post shared by Naomi Watts (@naomiwatts) on Jun 20, 2017 at 5:18am PDT

\"I had been sort of moving around Hollywood for a good decade trying to win people over,\" Watts reflected. “What do you want me to do? Who should I be? Should I be sexy, should I be funny, should I be a cold ice queen? Should I be a bad-ass action women? Who do you want me to be? I would never walk in as myself.\"

It wasn’t until Watts met director David Lynch, who would eventually cast her in her break-out role, that Watts started to come into her own.

\"David Lynch recognized something in me,\" Watts said. \"I walked in the room and he wasn't asking me to read anything, thank God, because I think I got to the point where I was just a terrible auditioner. And he just spoke to me and he looked into me, into my eyes, and I felt like he just connected with me and wanted to see me. And so, you know, each night he just unveiled all these masks.\"

Seconds after the lights went up in the #grandpalais #cannes at the screening of #mulhollanddrive A #lifechanging #moment #davidlynch #mentor #auteur ?? #grateful

A post shared by Naomi Watts (@naomiwatts) on Apr 26, 2016 at 11:17am PDT

“He’s just that kind of guy, he beams energy into you and then some, your best self comes out. And then he just gave me the role of a lifetime, you know? So that was the changing point.\"

The year was 2001, the role was the lead in Lynch’s controversial, but critically-acclaimed drama \"Mulholland Drive.\" The role launched Watts into super stardom. Two years later, she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu's \"21 Grams\" as a recovering drug addict turned housewife.

Watts continues to choose complex, dynamic characters, defy stereotypes and dodge type-casting. Her latest role in Netflix’s psychothriller \"Gypsy\" is no exception.

\"I would say if there's any repetitive theme in the work I do, identity is a big thing that keeps coming back to me, life and death kind of situations,\" she said. \"Definitely Gypsy was emblematic of the whole identity crisis thing.\"

Catch GYPSY Now streaming on Netflix everywhere!

A post shared by Naomi Watts (@naomiwatts) on Jun 30, 2017 at 5:03am PDT

Created and executive produced by newcomer Lisa Rubin, \"Gypsy” stars Watts as therapist Jean Holloway, a duplicitous psychotherapist who is a successful, married professional by day and leading another life by night, carrying on an affair with a younger woman and meddling in the lives of her patients.

\"To me it's sort of like a cautionary tale of a woman who has everything, and yet it's not enough.\" Watts mused.

Good times with this fantastic team #gypsynetflix @rubin.lisa @lizacliza @samtaylorjohnson @cookie_soph @karlglusman @lucyboynton1 @melanieliburd @poornajagannathan #cindyholland ?????? #tunein #netflixandchill

A post shared by Naomi Watts (@naomiwatts) on Jul 1, 2017 at 11:05am PDT

She said playing a complex women and working with women producers is important to her.

\"The women I choose to surround myself with are complex women and fascinating and multi-layered and have lived with contradictions and have desires and fantasies and dark thoughts,\" Watts said. \"So why can't we put that on the screen.\"

Hear Naomi Watts’s full interview, along with Lisa Rubin and “Gypsy” producer and the President of U.S. Production for Working Title Films, Liza Chasin on an all new episode of ABC Radio’s “No Limits with Rebecca Jarvis.”

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