This week’s EW has a feature on King Kong, with lots of pictures of Naomi Watts in the classic Fay Wray role. Although I think she is just fine as an actress, I always find her to be so bland from a physical perspective. She’s average-looking to a fault — I can never recognise her in her films, promotional materials, or even at awards shows, because she just doesn’t stand out in a crowd. She always looks to me like some other famous person’s handler, or date, or publicist.

So even though she does a good job in her movies, and I think she’s becoming a well-known name, I just can’t see her ever beeing a real “star” on the level of someone like Nicole Kidman or Julia Roberts or Reese Witherspoon. Not everyone in Hollywood has to be gorgeous but I think it’s important, to make the jump to real fame, to have some sort of physical “hook” that makes you instantly recognisable, so films can be sold and marketed on your presence. Even actors that are really good at “disappearing” into their roles — say, Daniel Day-Lewis or Ralph Fiennes — are recognisable when you see them in photographs or interviews. Naomi Watts is just a blank — I can’t get a handle on her at all.