Naomi Watts reveals she almost quit acting before David Lynch cast her in “Mulholland Drive”: 'He just saw me'

Naomi Watts almost made it to the end of the road in Hollywood before her longtime friend and collaborator David Lynch — who died last week at age 78 — cast her in the iconic 2001 noir Mulholland Drive.

The Oscar-nominated actress revealed Tuesday on Live With Kelly and Mark that she almost returned home to Australia, where her family moved and she got her start as an on-screen actress after spending her childhood in the United Kingdom, and credited Lynch as being "very instrumental" in keeping her "in America" to pursue a career in Hollywood.

"I wouldn't have stayed had I not met David Lynch. The chips were down, it was 10 years into flunking auditions," the 56-year-old told Kelly Ripa and guest cohost Anderson Cooper on the talk show, where she appeared to promote her new nonfiction book, Dare I Say It.

Related: Patricia Arquette learns of Lost Highway director David Lynch's death during live interview: 'There's nobody like him'

Watts continued, telling the pair that "nothing was happening" with her acting work, though she had booked some major jobs in the 1995 comic book adaptation Tank Girl, which was a notable flop at the box office, and in the 1996 slasher sequel Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering.

"I was literally alienating people. I was making them uncomfortable because I was so like, 'I need a job! I need a job!' So much so that my agent at the time said, 'You're too intense. You're making people uncomfortable.' Yeah, I need a job. I'm desperate, I need to work," Watts continued. "I planned on going home multiple times. Long story short, David Lynch called me in and has a very different way of casting. He sat me down and just looked me in the eyes and asked me questions, and most of the time I was like, 'How do I get out of your way? How do I speed this up?' [Because] I'm sure I'm not right, because I just had that programming: I'm not funny, I'm not sexy, I'm too old, I'm too this, too that. And he just saw me and was able to sort of lift these veneers."

Shortly thereafter, Watts said their meetings led to her being cast in the 2001 classic Mulholland Drive, the production of which led to Lynch becoming "a real mentor and friend" to the actress.

After his death, Watts pointed to the outpouring of love Lynch received on social media, because "he affected so many people — not just the people he worked with, but how he viewed life and what he gave."

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Mulholland Drive helped Lynch — known at the time for helming the TV series Twin Peaks and features like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Dune, and Blue Velvet, among others — reach new career heights, as the filmmaker scored his fourth overall Oscar nod for the project and his second in the Best Director category.

The film also helped push Watts into a new period of her career, with her acclaimed performance preceding a larger Hollywood breakout with roles in The Ring and 21 Grams — the latter of which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Watts would later re-team with Lynch on several projects, including lending her voice to the short series Rabbits in 2002 — a vocal part she'd later reprise in a short portion of Lynch's final feature, Inland Empire, in 2006 — and appearing in a role in Lynch's Twin Peaks revival series in 2017.

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