© JUANKR
November 20, 2025
Marianne Waldenfels
Hot flashes, migraines, feelings of shame, depressive moods—Naomi Watts is one of the first prominent women to openly talk about menopause. Her book "Dare I Say It" covers topics including symptom management, libido, and enhancing quality of life.
Naomi Watts' story is unusual. At only 36 years old - an age when most women are not even thinking about menopause - she went to the doctor because she wanted to start a family with her then-partner, actor Liev Schreiber, and wasn't getting pregnant. But in the practice, she received a shocking diagnosis: she was on the brink of menopause. Menopause – she hadn't dealt with this topic at all, it seemed light-years away.
Suddenly, however, she could explain some symptoms she had been struggling with in recent months. “I had been suffering from night sweats for a while, but no doctor – and I had seen plenty of doctors, as you always have to undergo a health check before starting to shoot a new film – had ever given it much thought,” Watts explains in her book Dare I Say it.
That her period came more and more frequently, sometimes every 15 or 18 days, seemed strange to her, but she didn't associate it with menopause. “However, when I was sitting in the doctor's office, I learned that the irregular period and night sweats were actually symptoms of perimenopause and had nothing to do with a stressful night shoot or a glass of wine too much at dinner.” The lack of exchange and lack of education intensified her suffering. Gradually she realized: She was not alone – half of the world's population goes through this phase.
Dr. Sharon Malone, a specialist in gynecology and obstetrics from Washington, D.C., and chief medical officer at Alloy Women’s Health and one of the leading menopause experts in the USA, however, says: “We must understand – and this has been proven in several studies – that suffering has been normalized as part of being a woman. We suffer from cramps, we suffer during childbirth, we suffer from premenstrual syndrome.
These phenomena, which exclusively affect women, are generally less researched. Because suffering in women is considered normal, there has been little attempt to develop effective measures against it. Women exaggerate. They are hysterical. It all exists only in their heads. Unfortunately, this perception is still widespread in medicine today. Women still have the feeling of not being heard, not being seen, and not being taken seriously. And that is exactly where the problem lies.”
About nine million women in Germany are going through menopause. The term menopause or climacteric refers to the period of hormonal changes at the end of the fertile phase of life. Doctors divide this period into perimenopause – the time shortly before menstruation stops, followed by menopause – the point of the last menstruation, after which there is no bleeding for at least 12 months. This is followed by postmenopause.
At 42, not long after the birth of her second child, Naomi Watts began to suffer permanently from menopausal symptoms. “Once I was on a plane when a hot flash overcame me. At that moment I felt like I was suffocating. The heat was overwhelming, but less like in a warm climate, more like the redness of shame rising to your face. I felt: Oh God, I have to get out of here immediately!
However, I was in the middle seat and had already gotten up a few times to go to the bathroom – much to the chagrin of my seatmate, who had been giving me dirty looks. So I stayed seated and mentally wished myself far away. If there had been a button I could press to catapult myself out of the plane, I would have pressed it and given the guy in the aisle seat the middle finger.”
Hot flashes are triggered by hormonal fluctuations. Naomi Watts' tip: “Dress in layers so you can quickly remove clothes if a hot flash occurs. Wear breathable cotton fabrics. Make sure you get enough sleep and drink plenty of water.
Pay attention to possible triggers and avoid foods and drinks that promote hot flashes, such as spicy food, alcohol, and caffeine – in short, everything that’s fun. If you feel a hot flash coming on, drink ice water or place a cooling pad on the back of your neck. A friend of mine swears by her portable neck fan that looks like a pair of headphones.”
Menopause can affect every woman differently. Some suffer from severe perimenopausal symptoms like hot flashes, bladder infections, sleep disorders, migraines, mood swings, or weight gain for many years, while others remain almost symptom-free. In Dare I Say It Naomi Watts combines her personal story with well-founded medical information and practical advice.
She writes about her own infertility story, hormone replacement therapy, feelings of shame and libido, nutrition, insomnia, and brain fog – and has interviewed leading experts on these topics, including Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a renowned hormone expert and bestselling author, Dr. Sharon Malone, an obstetrician and gynecologist from Washington, D.C., one of the leading menopause experts in the USA, and social psychologist Dr. Carol Tavris. “The most important insight about menopause symptoms is that they vary greatly,” says Tavris, who co-authored the book Estrogen Matters with Dr. Avrum Bluming.
“No wonder many women don't consider them part of the menopause package. With joint and muscle pain, you go to the rheumatologist. With palpitations, to the cardiologist. With depression, to the psychiatrist. Only when we realize that all of these are part of the changes triggered in the body by the drop in estrogen levels and other aspects of menopause, do we suddenly see it clearly.”
For many women, libido decreases during menopause, also due to the decline in sex hormones. When Naomi Watts started dating again after her separation from Liev Schreiber, she says she was a bit out of practice. Watts and her current husband, actor Billy Crudup, met in 2017 on the set of the Netflix thriller series Gypsy. In it, Watts plays a therapist with a dark side.
“When we first wanted to make love off-camera, I apologized before things got going, saying, 'I just want to put on something more comfortable... I'll be right back.' As if it were 1953 and I had a negligee in my bag.
Then I went to the bathroom, undressed, and desperately tried to scrape the hormone patch off my skin. I'd been wearing the patch for a few years since I started hormone therapy. I was afraid that if he saw it, he would realize I was in menopause: no longer a vibrant, fertile creature. What if he still wanted a child?”
The end of a woman's fertility and the many complaints that can accompany it: Even though there is still a great need for information, it is finally being discussed publicly: The gynecologist Sheila de Liz started it all when she published her guide in 2020 Woman on Fire , in which de Liz explains symptoms in an easy to understand and very entertaining way and explains what can help against them. Many women today call the book their salvation, as the new awareness of menopause is leading to women receiving better treatment.
Menopause has also found its way into entertainment literature – for example, with Miranda July's highly acclaimed novel All Fours. The book became a bestseller. If you're looking for a mystery on the subject of menopause, then Murder in the Menopause by Tine Dreyer is recommended.
The term menopause, by the way, dates back to 1812 and was coined by the French doctor Dr. Charles-Pierre-Louis de Gardanne. The word 'ménèpausie' is a combination of the Greek 'menes' for month and 'pausie', Greek for end. In 1821, de Gardanne changed the term to 'ménopause', and eventually, the accent disappeared in medical literature.
Naomi Watts has now made her peace with menopause – not least thanks to hormone replacement therapy. This therapy had fallen into disrepute after studies in 2002 and 2004, the results of which made headlines: The researchers found an increase in certain diseases, including coronary heart disease, strokes, and breast cancer.
However, the women were treated at the time with high-dose hormone preparations that were hardly used in Europe. In addition, around two-thirds of the women were overweight and some suffered from pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and coronary heart disease. That is why the authors of the WHI study have since re-evaluated the results of their work.
"The hormone therapy was of course not a miracle cure that made all complaints disappear in no time. But I felt much better immediately. I no longer woke up at night drenched in sweat and feeling like my duvet wanted to kill me," writes Naomi Watts. "In this way, I found a new balance in everyday life. At the same time, hormone therapy helped me to stay emotionally balanced.
For many women, HRT works against mood swings and improves sleep, which can be a major cause of emotional upheaval. I don't want to tell any woman what to do with her body, but I want to point out that no one has to suffer unnecessarily and there is no reason to categorically reject hormone therapy out of fear that it might be unsafe."
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