David Lynch's Mulholland Drive Completely Saved One Actor's Career

On the strength of her impressive supporting performance in the 1991 Australian comedy "Flirting" (a charmer that bolstered Nicole Kidman's acting bona fides while also introducing us to the brilliant Thandiwe Newton), Naomi Watts moved to Los Angeles seeking, if not stardom, steadying acting work. Her friend Kidman believed in her, and, being that Kidman was married to one of the biggest movie stars in the world (Tom Cruise), there was reason to believe she had the right connections to make it in a hyper-competitive industry where nearly every aspirant eventually washes out.

By the end of the 1990s, Watts' career had stalled. Her most prominent gigs were a supporting role as the spiky Jet Girl in the box office flop/cult favorite "Tank Girl" and a nothing part in the failed prestige picture "Dangerous Beauty." During an appearance on ABC's "Live! With Kelly and Mark," Watts recalled feeling as though her prospects were rapidly diminishing. "The chips were down," said Watts. "I was literally alienating people ... making them uncomfortable, like, 'I need a job, I need a job,' in fact, so much so that my agent at the time said, 'You're too intense. You're making people uncomfortable.' I'm like, yeah, 'I need a job. I need to work.'"

This desperation might've been hurting her reputation around town, but if there's one director who didn't care about difficult actors, it was David Lynch. The great American surrealist tended to cast via headshots; if he liked someone's look, he'd bring them in for a meeting and gauge the vibe. If the energy felt right, that actor was good to go. And when he brought Watts in to read for "Mulholland Drive," which was then planned as an ABC television series, he knew right away that she was the girl.

In a recent interview with Variety, Watts said, "I was flunking auditions over and over again, or I'd get in a movie and it would get cut down or out. It was just bad luck." She felt "unhirable," and had no idea how to break out of that rut.

At the end of her tether, Watts got called in to meet with Lynch for a part in "Mulholland Drive," and, upon walking into the room, she sensed something special was about to happen. As she told Variety:

"The minute I walked in, it just felt different. He was present. He was asking me questions. It felt very different than any previous audition I'd gone to — there were so many where it's a line of people, you've had to wait two hours, you've had to drive across town to get there and then go back the next day, and people would barely look at you. But David just lit up, and I was able to connect with him in a different way."

Watts' fortunes briefly took another downturn when ABC passed on Lynch's pilot, but the filmmaker was too enamored of the material to move on. He blew it out into a feature-length rumination on the glamor and rot of the movie industry, and furnished Watts with the dual roles of sweet-natured, up-and-coming actor Betty Elms and the defeated, burned-out performer Diane Selwyn. Watts was extraordinary. She always had the gift. She just needed to work with a director who loved actors and believed in her talent. In 2001, Lynch told the L.A. Times he "saw someone that I felt had a tremendous talent, and I saw someone who had a beautiful soul, an intelligence — possibilities for a lot of different roles, so it was a beautiful full package." It's a shame they'll never get to dance again.