Yahoo Lifestyle Naomi Watts Remembers Billy Crudup's Comment About Pubes Making Her Melt
Naomi Watts remembers a comment husband Billy Crudup once made about his pubic hair as the “most romantic words” she has ever heard.
Part guidebook, part memoir, the movie star’s new book, “Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause,” gets frank about aging.
In an anecdote excerpted by Us Weekly from the book released Tuesday, Watts explains how Crudup helped put her at ease when she told him why she was wearing a hormone patch the first night they slept together.
“Mortified” to reveal she was in the midst of menopause at the time of their first tryst, the “Mullholland Drive” actor recalled how all of her embarrassment faded away when Crudup replied, “Hey, if it makes you feel better: I’ve got gray hairs on my balls.”
Before Crudup’s confession about his downstairs hairs, Watts remembers wringing her hands about how the “Almost Famous” star would react to her health status.
“I’d started wearing the patch a couple of years earlier for hormone therapy,” she writes in “Dare I Say It.” “I was worried that if he saw it he would realize it meant I was menopausal: no longer a vibrant, fertile being.”
Hoping to hide any sign her body was changing, she “ripped off” her patch and “scrubbed the skin raw” in the bathroom.
“Unfortunately, the patch’s adhesive leaves a mark on the skin that’s very hard to get rid of,” she remembered.
When Crudup asked Watts if she was doing OK, she said she emerged from the bathroom full of anxiety.
“I stumbled and reached for words, but nothing would quite come out,” the English actor writes in her book.
Rather than judge his then-girlfriend, Watts said, “a smile broke over his face.”
“He seemed very relieved that the issue wasn’t a lack of desire,” she recalled of Crudup’s reaction. “He told me he thought it was great I was taking care of myself, and he asked me how he could help.”
It was then that he replied with his own candid quip about getting older.
“Those to date remain the most romantic words I’ve ever heard, onscreen or off, and that includes the script of every movie I’ve ever been in,” Watts adds in “Dare I Say It.”
“And even this same man’s very loving marriage proposal, which came seven years later,” she mused about her longtime partner, whom she married in a New York City courthouse wedding in June 2023.
The actor told the Los Angeles Times she decided to write “Dare I Say It,” which is full of wit and practical wisdom, in spite of the taboos that exist around talking about menopause.
“I wished there was a book when I was suffering through it, flailing and filled with shame and doubt and confusion,” she told the paper in an interview published Tuesday.
