Naomi Watts almost left Hollywood after struggling to get roles for 10 years: Her agent said she was "too nervous," then she met David Lynch, and everything changed

Naomi Watts started her career as a model and then began acting in Australian TV series before deciding to try her luck in Hollywood. She moved to the U.S. in 1993, but it took years before she had a breakthrough—specifically until 2001, when Mulholland Drive (David Lynch's surreal neo-noir), which she starred in, was released in theaters. After that, her career skyrocketed, even though she was about to give up on her Hollywood dreams.

"I wouldn’t have stayed in Hollywood if I hadn’t met David Lynch. I ran out of money, I’d been stumbling through auditions for 10 years and nothing worked out. I literally started pushing people away. They felt uncomfortable around me because I kept saying I needed a job," recalled the actress, whose agent was also starting to give up on her. "He said, 'You’re too nervous, you’re putting others in an uncomfortable situation.' Well, yes, I needed the job, I was desperate, I had to work. I planned to go home several times."

Instead of returning home, Watts embarked on a different, darker path, during a time when she was only getting roles in questionable films like Tank Girl, Children of the Corn IV, or The Bermuda Triangle.

"In short, what happened was that David Lynch called me, and he handled auditions very differently. He sat me down, looked me in the eye, and asked questions, most of which were things like 'How can I give you a free pass? How can we speed this up?' Because I was sure I wasn’t good enough. I had this programmed belief that I wasn’t funny, I wasn’t sexy, I was too old, too this, too that. But he simply saw something in me and was able to release those inhibitions."

Mulholland Drive was originally meant to be a TV series, similar to Twin Peaks, but after the pilot didn’t get a green light, Lynch turned it into a feature film. It went on to win him the Best Director award at Cannes, and the French Academy awarded the film the César for Best Foreign Film. Watts' career was almost instantly boosted by the film: the following year came The Ring, and the year after that 21 Grams.

Fifteen years later, the actress appeared in the third season of Twin Peaks: The Return, and upon Lynch's death, she wrote, "It wasn’t just his art that impacted me. His wisdom, humor, and the love he showed me gave me a special kind of confidence that I had never experienced before."