Naomi Watts has said she will never get over the tragic death of her father.
Peter Watts, who was a sound engineer for Pink Floyd, died of an apparent heroin overdose at the age of 31 when Naomi was seven years old.
“The grief never goes away but playing [different roles in movies] you find news ways of understanding it,” the actress told Marie Claire Australia.
“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.”
Peter and Naomi’s costume designer mother Myfanwy, known as Miv, divorced when she was four years old.
The actress previously explained how Pink Floyd helped Miv financially to “get things underway” after Peter’s death, but she and her mother still struggled.
Watts has previously spoken about dealing with grief decades after losing her father, telling Vogue Australia in 2021: “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,” she added.
Myfanwy also spoke about coping with the loss of her ex-husband, telling the Daily Mail Australia: “It left scars. It was a shock. His death made Naomi incredibly determined. It had a profound effect on her, as it did on the entire family,” she said.
“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.”
Watts is currently promoting the new FX anthology series Feud: Bette and Joan, which centres on various famous feuds throughout history, including Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, as well as Truman Capote and the New York elite.
Watts will appear in the series as Babe Paley, the American magazine editor who was married to William S. Paley, the founder of CBS.
In other news, Watts recently married The Morning Show star Billy Crudup. The couple have reportedly been together since 2017, having worked together on Netflix‘s Gypsy.