Naomi Watts used one of the San Sebastián Festival's biggest moments to challenge how cinema pushes women aside as they grow older. At 57, she received the Donostia Award and put representation at the center of her speech. Her point was direct: women need to see themselves on screen while they are still being offered leading roles. As El Cultural reported, Watts argued that stories about women over 50 must continue to be told.
José Antonio Bayona, the Spanish director who worked with Watts on 'Lo imposible', presented the award. Their reunion added a personal note to the ceremony, but Watts looked beyond her own career. She described the award as part of a shift in the industry, one that lets women her age continue to carry films instead of being pushed into secondary roles. The official San Sebastián Festival account said the ceremony took place at the Kursaal Auditorium during the 74th edition of the festival.
Her speech also answered an old prediction about her future.
Watts recalled that after filming 'Mulholland Lead' at 31, she was told her career would be over by 40. Instead, the film became the turning point that brought her to David Lynch after a decade of rejections. She dedicated the Donostia Award to Lynch, crediting him with giving her a role she had not imagined possible and seeing something in her before she saw it herself. RTVE linked that chance to what it called the role of Watts's life, which took her career to a new level.
Watts said Lynch's influence went beyond a major career chance. His approach changed how she understood acting, teaching her to trust instinct and accept uncertainty, without fearing what is strange or inexplicable. That experience helped shape a career that later included work with Michael Haneke in 'Funny Games' and David Cronenberg in 'Promesas del Este', as well as collaborations with Alejandro González Iñárritu in '21 gramos', Peter Jackson in 'King Kong' and Bayona.
Watts also spoke about Bayona's place in her career. She recalled trusting him from their first day of work and said those production memories are among her most beautiful. Bayona said working with her changed how he directed actors and understood cinema.
The San Sebastián appearance also introduced Watts's latest film.
In 'La esposa perfecta' ('The Housewife'), directed by Ben Shirinian, she plays a housewife drawn into a journalistic investigation involving an alleged Nazi officer living clandestinely in New York. Her character joins a dangerous search and learns more about herself along the way.
Watts said acting still attracts her because living through other people's lives reveals new parts of her own. She is still learning and growing. The official festival report captured the same idea in her description of the joy of spending a life living through other people and discovering more of herself along the way. That connects the film's subject with the point she made at the ceremony: experience is no reason to remove an actress from the center of a story.
The context of the award was examined in an earlier report, which also noted Bayona's role in presenting the honor. Watts is the second recipient of the Donostia Award at this edition of the festival, after Werner Herzog. The 2026 program so placed Watts and Herzog among the two recipients of the festival's honorary award.
Watts turned an honorary ceremony into a clear statement about the industry. Her career makes the case: she was once told her prospects had an expiry date, then went on to work with Lynch and Haneke, along with Cronenberg, Iñárritu, Jackson and Bayona. Age still shapes expectations in cinema, and Watts used the stage to say women must remain visible at the center of the story.
