Joe Neumaier
New York Daily News

NEW YORK ˜ Naomi Watts has no fear of being erotic on screen. A lesbian love scene in "Mulholland Drive" brought her to stardom.

And her hot love scene with Sean Penn in "21 Grams" is helping to heat up Oscar buzz.

"I'm just not that uptight about it," she says.

But she doesn't want it to be a steady diet.

"I don't want to be nude in every movie I do, even if it's a great movie," she says. "Because then it might seem like you're always up for it."

"Some actresses say, 'No nudity ever,' and some of those women who decide that are not doing the kinds of stories I want to tell. We all differ in the things that matter to us.

"But, you know, my father worked for Pink Floyd in the '70s," ˜ Dad was a sound technician who died when she was 10, Mom was an amateur actress ˜ "so I grew up with parents who didn't wear underwear!"

The 35-year-old actress moved from England to Australia when she was 14 and is part of the Aussie colony in Hollywood ˜ best pals with old Sydney school chum Nicole Kidman, locked in an on-again, off-again relationship with 24-year-old actor Heath Ledger.

Watts met Ledger while filming the gangster drama "Ned Kelly" in Australia last year. Their romance hit a rough patch in August, when his schedule took him to Prague for the filming of "The Brothers Grimm."

The sweet-natured Watts lets her gaze wander, her eyes almost filling with tears, when she declines to talk about Ledger.

"I really just don't want to talk about my personal life," Watts says. "I understand the reason for asking, but I would prefer to leave that alone.

"Let's keep it a mystery."

The constant media attention is something she still needs to get used to.

"I'll learn how to avoid it or handle it. I've seen how Nicole deals with (the media). ... It gets her down sometimes. But you can't get so freaked out that you're held hostage in your home.

"Nicole definitely has an urge to live and have experiences in an adventurous way, and I do, too."

Watts worked on Australian TV until moving to Los Angeles eight years ago, where she got roles in such under-the-radar movies as "Dangerous Beauty" (as a noblewoman) and "Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering" (as a doctor).

"Through my 20s I didn't understand why I wasn't getting cast," Watts says. "That's the decade of making the same mistakes over and over, I guess."

Things changed when David Lynch cast her in the dual role of a wide-eyed ingenue and her double, a drugged-out former actress, in 2001's "Mulholland Drive."

"I was completely off the radar until 'Mulholland Drive' ˜ it's O.K., we can say it!" she says, laughing.

She has followed it with a series of tough roles.

She was at the center of "The Ring," last fall's smash horror movie as a journalist investigating a mysterious videotape that seemed to cause the death of anyone viewing it.

She's a mother-turned-recovering-drug-addict out for revenge against the man who killed her family in "21 Grams."

And in this summer's comedy "Le Divorce," she was a pregnant woman who attempts suicide after her husband leaves her.

"We all have darkness in us. Some of us are good at avoiding it, and some of us are better at owning it," says Watts. "I think I'm the second type.

"I have a normal amount of fears in my life, like everyone does. And I think the characters I'm drawn to are better at confronting their fears. Hopefully, they're going to teach me how to do it."

And after the success of "The Ring," Watts feels like audiences are finally getting her, too.

"I do feel like I'm a late bloomer," she says. "I moved around so much as a kid, and I'm still moving around, working out who I am. Maybe that's why people didn't get me years ago.

"Now that I've grown up a bit, they get me."

"Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson wants to get her, too _ to sit in the giant ape's paw in his remake of "King Kong." The movie already has a release date ˜ Dec. 12, 2005.

She says she's thinking about it.