What are the best Naomi Watts movie performances?

From her career-making dual performance in Mulholland Drive to her Oscar-nominated work in 21 Grams and The Impossible, Naomi Watts is one of cinema's most committed and gifted dramatic actresses. Which is her best?

1

Mulholland Drive

Watts' career-defining dual performance in David Lynch's surrealist masterpiece — shifting from wide-eyed ingenue to bitter noir figure — won her Best Actress from the National Society of Film Critics.

2

21 Grams

Watts earned her first Academy Award nomination for her shattering portrayal of a grief-destroyed mother in Alejandro González Iñárritu's fractured, emotionally relentless drama.

3

The Impossible

Watts' grueling, physically and emotionally exposed performance as a tsunami survivor earned her a second Oscar nomination and is widely considered one of the most visceral disaster-film performances ever.

4

The Ring

Watts anchors this seminal J-horror remake with a grounded, relentlessly watchable performance that helped ignite Hollywood's obsession with Asian horror adaptations.

5

King Kong

Watts brings unexpected heart and genuine chemistry opposite a CGI ape in Peter Jackson's epic, channeling Depression-era desperation into one of blockbuster cinema's most tender performances.

6

Eastern Promises

Watts is the moral anchor of David Cronenberg's chilling Russian mob thriller, her radiantly wounded midwife providing the human center amid unflinching violence.

7

Birdman

In this Best Picture winner, Watts holds her own against a stellar ensemble as a stage actress managing a spiraling professional and personal crisis with tightly wound intensity.

8

The Painted Veil

Watts gives a quietly powerful performance as a selfish woman forced to confront her own character when her husband takes her into the heart of a cholera epidemic in 1920s China.

9

Fair Game

Watts plays real-life CIA operative Valerie Plame with cool, steely precision in this political thriller about the Bush-era intelligence leak scandal.

10

Funny Games

Michael Haneke's deeply uncomfortable home-invasion thriller gives Watts one of cinema's most sustained portraits of terror — a performance of harrowing, almost unbearable authenticity.

11

Demolition

Watts brings empathetic warmth and complexity to a single mother drawn into the orbit of a grieving banker in this underrated character-driven drama directed by Jean-Marc Vallée.

12

Penguin Bloom

Watts delivers an interior, quietly devastating performance as a paralyzed woman finding unexpected healing through an injured magpie, based on a remarkable true story.