Ballsy Billy.
Naomi Watts is getting candid on her romance with husband Billy Crudup.
The actress, 56, has been vocal for years about going through menopause, and is now recalling trying to date after her split from Liev Schreiber in 2016.
Watts fell for her “Gypsy” co-star, 56, but had a moment of panic before their first night together.
In her new book, “Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause,” she recounts going into the bathroom to try and scratch off the hormone patch she had on.
While behind the door, Watts blurted out to Crudup, “I didn’t want you to see it because then you would know I’m in early menopause, which means I am old.”
But his reply sealed the deal for Watts, who tied the knot with Crudup in 2023.
The “Morning Show” actor offered to help — and pointed out that they were the same age.
“If it makes you feel better,” Crudup told her, “I’ve got gray hairs on my balls.” Those were, as she pens, “the most romantic words I’ve ever heard, onscreen or off.”
That kind of understanding “was everything,” Watts told People magazine. “I felt seen and heard and there’s so much love in that.”
The “Mulholland Drive” star also opens up about her 11-year relationship with Schreiber, 57. She reveals it wasn’t easy for the pair, who have kids Sasha, 17, and Kai, 16, to conceive.
“I was determined to get pregnant as soon as possible. Because of my hormone levels, I wasn’t a candidate for IVF, but I tried fertility drugs like Clomid and procedures like intrauterine insemination (IUI),” Watts writes in her book. “I would have eaten my dog’s toenails if someone told me it would help.”
The “Penguin Bloom” alum adds that she tracked her ovulation “on the regular” and got scans for updates on her “follicles and the eggs forming.”
“We’d have sex at the exact optimal moment for conception,” Watts admits. “None of it worked.”
The actress was 36 when she and Schreiber tried for a baby.
“I always dreamed I’d be a young mother but never got around to it,” pens Watts. “I’d spent my entire adult life up to that point trying to avoid pregnancy, and so once I felt ready, at age 36, I assumed I’d get pregnant on my first go — maybe my second or third at most. Months went by. Nothing.”
During the process, she suffered a miscarriage.
Watts found out she was pregnant while filming the 2007 crime thriller “Eastern Promises.” During her time on set, she did her own stunts and stayed silent about her pregnancy.
“I also didn’t want to tell anyone yet, because it was so early, and because I didn’t want to be difficult, so I just kept going,” she writes. “It was yet another example of how as women we often do things that put us at risk in order to be team players.”
Watts and Schreiber welcomed their first child, Sasha, in July 2007. Their second child, Kai, was born in December 2008.
“I somehow learned the program to make babies,” she explains in her book. “I always knew I wanted more than one baby, though I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. I’d wanted more than two, actually — but alas, by that point time really had run out.”
“Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause” is out now.
