Naomi Watts used the biggest stage of her European festival career to honor the man who, in her words, changed everything for her. Accepting the Donostia Award for lifetime achievement at the San Sebastian International Film Festival on Friday night, the British-born actress devoted the bulk of her acceptance speech to David Lynch, the director who cast her in 2001's Mulholland Drive and, she said, rescued a career that had stalled for a decade.
"I miss you," Watts said of Lynch, who died in January 2025 at 78. She described the filmmaker as a "creative guardian" whose faith in her arrived at the moment she had nearly run out of reasons to keep auditioning. Watts was 32 when Mulholland Drive opened in U.S. theaters, having spent the better part of ten years cycling through small roles in Hollywood productions without a breakthrough.
The Donostia Award, San Sebastian's highest honor, recognizes a body of work rather than a single performance, and festival organizers introduced Watts as an actress whose range has stretched from blockbuster spectacle to some of the most emotionally exposed work of her generation. She is the first recipient of the prize at this year's edition.
A Role That Almost Didn't Reach Her
Watts has told the story many times, and she returned to it Friday: the project began life as a television pilot for ABC, and the network passed on it. Lynch then reworked the material into a feature, expanding the world of his two female leads and keeping Watts in the part of Betty Elms, a bright-eyed blonde newly landed in Los Angeles to chase stardom.
In the finished film, Betty crosses paths with Rita, an amnesiac brunette played by Laura Harring, and the pair set out to piece together Rita's identity. Around them, a separate narrative follows filmmaker Adam Kesher, played by Justin Theroux, as he battles sinister forces while casting his latest project. The film runs 147 minutes and mixes thriller, drama and mystery registers, a combination that initially puzzled critics and distributors alike.
The 2001 release ultimately became one of the defining American films of its decade and earned Lynch an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Watts' performance, which shifts radically in the film's final act when her character's identity transforms, became the calling card that led to The Ring, 21 Grams and two further Oscar nominations.
A Festival That Has Long Championed Her
San Sebastian has periodically honored Watts, and her relationship with the festival predates this award. Her remarks Friday were notable less for their length than for their directness; she did not read from notes, according to attendees, and paused more than once while discussing Lynch's death.
She also acknowledged the rest of the Mulholland Drive ensemble, singling out Harring, Theroux and the late Ann Miller, who played Coco in one of her final screen roles. Robert Forster, Mark Pellegrino, Dan Hedaya and Angelo Badalamenti, who composed the film's score, rounded out the credited cast. Badalamenti, a longtime Lynch collaborator, died in 2022.
Watts did not announce any new projects from the stage, and her representatives declined to comment on what she plans to shoot next. She has remained steadily employed in the years since Lynch's death, splitting time between independent dramas and streaming productions.
The Donostia statuette places Watts in a lineage that includes Meryl Streep, Ian McKellen and Penélope Cruz, all of whom have collected the prize in previous years. The festival continues through the weekend.
For Watts, though, the evening belonged to a single collaborator. Mulholland Drive holds a 7.8 rating on TMDb, a figure that has crept upward over two decades as younger viewers discover it - a longevity she attributed Friday to the man who handed her the script. "He saw something I couldn't see in myself," she said.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
