When Naomi Watts was 36 years old, wanting to start a family but not getting pregnant, she “was shocked” when her doctor told her that she was close to menopause.
“I really had to focus on getting pregnant. I needed to be a mother or I was going to be some kind of failure of a woman,” she said while speaking on a women’s health panel at Hello Sunshine’s Shine Away, connected by AT&T, event in Los Angeles on Sunday. “Which is ridiculous and absurd. There are plenty of ways to be a parent if you want to be, but I just went into a spiral of shame and fear.”
Watts said she had a “lightbulb go off” at the time. She remembered that her own mother had gone into menopause early and had her last period at 45 years old.
“I didn’t know any detail around it,” Watts said, “that [my mom] had a multitude of symptoms, that she was suffering in any way. It was just something that was not spoken about in detail.”
She continued: “I said to my mom on the phone, ‘Why didn’t you tell me more?’ And she said, ‘Well, these are the things I didn’t tell you because my mother never told me.’ And I was like, ‘But that is just making no sense.’ We’re half the population. Why is this a secret? Who signed this code of silence and agreed that we should all just be hush-hush?”
Menopause, according to the Mayo Clinic, is when periods “stop for good” for a full 12 months. While this can happen during a person’s 40s or 50s, the average age is 51 in the U.S. Common symptoms include hot flashes, sleep disruption and vaginal dryness — the result of hormone fluctuation, which can start in perimenopause, the time leading up to menopause.
What was especially frustrating for Watts was that she had tried to freeze her eggs at 33, three years before wanting to start a family, to ensure that she would be ready once she could take a break from work.
“It was right at the point where my career was taking off,” she explained. “I was trying, and things were blowing up, and I was like, ‘Let me get on top of this because I’m pretty sure I’m going to work for the next five years.’ And I also had this thing in the back of my mind of, ‘In Hollywood, everything is over at 40,’ because that’s what they told us.”
Watts said she went to see a “very well-known doctor” in Los Angeles and asked to freeze her eggs.
“He laughed in my face, basically,” she recalled. “He said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re 33. You’re going to be fine. No problem.’”
She added, “I was kind of shocked, and especially when you’re having that conversation three years later and discovering you’re close to menopause.”
Because of her experience, Watts, who went on to give birth to two children whom she shares with former partner Liev Schreiber, decided to launch her own wellness company, Stripes, in 2022, with a focus on menopause health.
“I wanted to create a business that really spoke to a woman going through this, of perimenopause all the way through, to help with solutions, hydration being one, as well as education and community because we need to be better set up for it. And the advocacy part was crucial to me,” she said.
This comes at a time when other Hollywood actresses over 40, or even 50, like Halle Berry, are also speaking up about menopause and the lack of education around the subject.
For Watts, launching Stripes “wasn’t just about another beauty brand.”
“It was, ‘How do we come together and feel relevant, visible and empowered?’ This is actually a great time of life,” she said. “So many things can happen after 50. It’s something to be proud of, and you should hold your head high.”
Watts is dedicated to continuing the conversation and even has a book on the subject, Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause, coming out in January.
“Thank God that we are able to have these conversations with each other, with our families, the workplace, just owning it,” Watts said.
“I have found myself in situations at airports or on the streets, where women come up to me, and I think, ‘Oh God, they’re gonna ask for a selfie and I haven’t got my lippie on.’ They don’t want a selfie. They want to, with tears in their eyes, say, ‘Thank you for giving me the language in how to discuss this with my partner, or my kid,’ and that’s meaningful to me.”
