Naomi Watts has said that she worried she would lose acting roles after developing premature menopause symptoms aged 36.
The British-Australian actor, 55, reflected on being told by someone in the film industry that her career was going to be over by 40 and she went into a “frantic panic”.
Speaking at a roundtable event hosted by The Hollywood Reporter, The Impossible actor was asked about the stigma surrounding menopause and if she had any concerns about how menopause would impact her career.
“I started late by Hollywood standards – I was 31 when Mulholland Drive finally launched,” she explained.
“I was also told, ‘It’s going to be over by 40, so work, work, work.’ And then, when I was at the precipice of wanting to start a family, I was 36, I was told I was close to menopause. I went into this frantic panic, a lot of shame and fear.”
Watts admitted that she was afraid to publicly reveal she was going through menopause out of fear of her Hollywood career being jeopardised.
Addressing the stigma that surrounds menopause, and premature menopause, Watts explained: “I felt like if I ever dared to mention that word, I would be branded as redundant, finished, off to pasture, go to the sidelines, you’re not sexy, there’s no way you can act anymore. It’d be career suicide to bring that into the room.”
Watts remembered having a wake-up call moment when she realised that women were wrongly punished by society for going into menopause, when it is something that “half of the population” will experience.
“But then I was like, ‘This makes no sense. We’re half the population. Everybody’s going to go into menopause at some point, so why shouldn’t we be talking about it?’”
She added: “When you learn about the symptoms and how long they can go on for, why can’t we find the support? And it’s not just the physiological support you need, it’s the emotional support ... So, I just went, ‘F*** this, let’s just talk about it.’”
Watts decided that she was going to be vocal about her menopause, and started to realise that she can’t control how people reacted to her admission.
“And in terms of my career, I felt like, ‘Well, if it spooks everyone, that’s a bummer, but hopefully it actually does the opposite.’”
Watts had previously said she thought of menopause as “equating to the end” of her career, when she experienced it three years after her breakthrough performance in David Lynch’s 2001 psychological thriller Mulholland Drive.
The King Kong actor has previously said that going through early menopause was “incredibly isolating”, with the NHS estimating that premature menopause – before the age of 40 – affects one per cent of women in the UK.
The symptoms are the same as perimenopause, or the years of transition leading up to menopause. These usually include changes in the pattern and/or frequency of menstrual cycles, anxiety, mood changes, hot flushes, and hair loss or thinning.
