Naomi Watts Dedicates Donostia Award to Her ‘Mulholland Drive’ Director David Lynch: “I Miss You”

British star Naomi Watts dedicated her Donostia Award to the late, great David Lynch on Saturday night.

Watts picked up San Sebastián Film Festival’s most prestigious honor before a screening of her latest feature, The Housewife . She was introduced by J.A. Bayona , the Spanish filmmaker who directed Watts in 2012’s The Impossible , which would earn the actress her second Oscar nomination.

“Naomi, I want to thank you for having trusted that young director who was scared to death,” said Bayona, who spoke touchingly about their time shooting the project, based on a real story from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. “For being the best travel companion I’ve ever had, and for teaching me something that, today, I’m still looking [for] every time I start working in front of a new actor. I admire you deeply, but above all, I love you. And tonight I can also say that I am fulfilling a dream, a dream come true.” Related Stories Movies San Sebastián Chief José Luis Rebordinos on His Final Year at the Helm -- and Being the Only Top Film Festival to Take a Political Stance Movies Werner Herzog Picks Up San Sebastian's Donostia Award at Politically Charged Opening Ceremony

Watts was emotional as she came to collect the award and thanked Bayona for his kind words. “Shooting in Spain with incredible crews, getting to know the Thai community, so many full, brilliant memories, and I loved it all, the whole experience, even the hard stuff,” she said about The Impossible , which grossed over $198 million at the global box office upon its release. “Even doing 30 takes in the water tank, submerged,” she laughed, shouting out her co-star Tom Holland, who made his live-action debut in the film aged 15. “Tom Holland called it the best water park he ever went to. I called it pure pain!”

The Briton continued that it “wasn’t an easy trajectory” making a name for herself in Hollywood. “There was so much rejection. A lot of people telling me I wasn’t going to make it,” she said. After 10 years of back-to-back rejections, everything changed when she met her Mulholland Drive director, David Lynch. “[He] saw me, and all those wounds from all that rejection now appeared as growth. He gave me the role that you couldn’t even dream for. He really just changed my life. He gave me a different understanding of what it meant to act, to trust instinct, to embrace uncertainty, and to not be afraid of the strange or the unexplained. But more than that, he believed in something in me before I fully believed in myself, and that is a gift that you never forget. So tonight, I do really feel like this award is very much about David.”

Watts, now 57, also added that she is grateful, “as a woman of my age, despite what I was told at 31 when I was launching Mulholland Drive — that it’d be all dried up and finished at the age of 40 — I’m grateful beyond words to be part of shifting that narrative,” she beamed. Her rallying cry continued: “We need to see ourselves. Women are consumers of films and storytelling too.