Naomi Watts, Princess Diana Movie Highlights Shared Passion
Naomi Watts has won the honor of portraying the late Princess Diana in the upcoming "Caught in Flight."
The Australian actress beat out fellow actresses Keira Knightley and Jessica Chastain to win the role. "It is such an honor to be able to play this iconic role. Princess Diana was loved across the world, and I look forward to rising to the challenge of playing her on screen," Watts told reporters.
The movie will focus exclusively on Diana's last two years before the crash that killed her in 1997. Reports state that it will include the relationship she had with Dr. Hasnat Khan, whom many called "the love of her life." The two were together for nearly two years before they ended the relationship.
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Diana became a humanitarian for people everywhere, going places and doing things no other royal had done before. Just before her death, Diana went to Bosnia to address the issue of landmines and push for legislation to help survivors of hidden landmines.
Watts and Diana actually have one passion in common; both have spoken publicly about the global HIV/AIDS crisis. Diana broke protocol when she visited patients being treated for HIV/AIDS at the height of the epidemic. "HIV does not make people dangerous to know. You can shake their hands and give them hugs; heaven knows they need it."
For her part, Watts has been very active, participating in the AIDS walk; she was named a goodwill ambassador for the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. "It has been both unfortunate and unfair for HIV infection to be considered a shameful disease, for people living with HIV to be judged as blameworthy, and for AIDS to be equated with certain death," she said during an event honoring World AIDS Day.
Filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel, who has also written "Five Minutes of Heaven" and "Downfall," is writing the movie.
