Naomi Watts is a "hoarder".

Naomi Watts

Naomi Watts

The '21 Grams' actress has been heavily influenced by her mother Mav, a former stylist turned interior designer, when it comes to raising her sons Sasha, 10, and nine-year-old Kai - who she has with former partner Liev Schreiber - but admits that isn't all positive.

She said: "She has influenced me and that's been passed on to my kids in terms of treasuring things and saving something, re-creating it and making it beautiful. The negative side is that I'm a hoarder."

And Naomi can see a lot of her bohemian mother's traits in her youngest son.

She said: "He's his grandmother's child. From the moment he could talk, he had an eye for detail and beauty."

When the 49-year-old actress was younger, she used to be embarrassed by her mother's unique approach to life and only grew to embrace her quirks when she was in her teens.

She recalled: "There were times when she was not only incredibly outspoken but dressed in a fashionable way.

"I remember thinking, 'Aargh, why can't she wear tweed suits?'

"It wasn't until my teens I thought I had the grooviest mum ever."

Naomi's parents divorced when she was four, and three years later, her dad, sound engineer Peter Watts, died at the age of 30, just as he and Miv were trying to rekindle their relationship.

Though the 'King Kong' actress admitted it would have been "nice" to have her father around, she doesn't really remember life with him.

She told Britain's HELLO! magazine: "Mum was incredibly young and leant on the help of my grandparents for a while.

"But she also wanted to get up and do things to support her family, which meant finding work and shifting from places where we lived.

"People say, 'Was it awful, not having a father?' But I didn't ever really know what it was like to have one.

"When you look back, you think, 'It would have been nice to have that'. But it was the life we knew. And you get used to it."


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