Naomi Watts has revealed she took advantage of her dance scenes in While We’re Young to bust out her moves.
The Birdman actress admitted she indulged her inner dancer in Noah Baumbach’s comedy-drama, in which she plays a middle-aged wife wanting to revisit her younger days.
“I have a bit of a frustrated dancer in me. I’ve always loved dance,” she said.
“Dance was one of the things that led me to acting even though I say I fell in love with acting fairly early on… Around 16 and 17, I got heavily into dance but I think I just came into it too late and I was never going to be really great at it, so I let it go and the dance led to more acting classes.”
Naomi, 46, gets to show off her skills when her character Cornelia, who is married to Ben Stiller’s Josh, joins a hip-hop class.
“They didn’t know what kind of dancer I was – and it’s not good dancing up there but it was her freeing herself and saying, ‘OK, I do need to shake this up and bring my body alive again and forget about everything and everyone around me’,” she explained.
“And she threw herself in with such ferocity almost bringing on a rebirth of herself,” the actress continued.
“It surprised Noah and it surprised me as well because he kept rolling the camera and he shot every angle and I was like, ‘Oh my God I’m just going to go crazy here and I think he likes it!’.”
Naomi, who is mum to two sons with partner Liev Schreiber, said she has joined a dance class in real life.
“I go to a dance class myself called BBS – Body By Simone. It’s little mini dance routines and I am often the oldest person in the room although I forget that,” she said.
But she admitted her age may have an impact on her flexibility.
“I’m fairly fit. I’ve always loved to dance and keep fit but more recently, literally within the last six months, I feel like I cannot keep up any longer and my back starts to hurt,” she said.
“And I get angry and then I have to really learn to forgive myself and go, ‘You know what, you’re nearly twice the age of some of the people in this room, give yourself a break’.”
Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried also star in While We’re Young, which is in cinemas now.
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