MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The actor Naomi Watts tells a story about a doctor's appointment. At the time, she had just finished filming "King Kong." She wanted to have a baby, and she was having trouble getting pregnant. The doctor examined her and pronounced, looks like you're close to menopause. Watts was 36 years old. She almost fell off the exam table. Naomi Watts writes about that moment in her new book "Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I'd Known About Menopause." Naomi Watts, welcome.
NAOMI WATTS: Thank you, Mary Louise. It's good to be here.
KELLY: Why did you almost fall off the exam table that day?
WATTS: I think I was just shocked. Here I was, wanting to begin a new chapter of my life, and I was slammed with this news of, well, actually, you're close to the end.
KELLY: And it's really young - 36. It must have felt so young.
WATTS: Yes. I was obviously later than my mum coming to the world of parenting, but I still felt pretty young, certainly by standards that were going on in urban places. You were seeing people getting pregnant in their 40s, even late 40s, early 50s. So I was pretty shocked and went into a massive panic. And my doctor was very compassionate and very - you know, he didn't mean to scare me. But I just found it to be just the worst possible news.
KELLY: Well, and I was struck that you say you felt completely alone as you navigated this because you quote a statistic - every year, 2 million American women enter menopause. If I'm doing my math right, that's 5 or 6,000 women a day.
WATTS: Correct.
KELLY: This is not a rare or unique experience, but you felt completely alone. Why?
WATTS: Yeah. Well, because the conversation was completely closed - it's ridiculous, given those statistics. Every single woman, if they're lucky enough, will go through menopause. It's really staggering how there is still a hangover for, you know, keeping it a secret. And the rest of us, who are not going to go through menopause, should know about it.
KELLY: So to preview your book a little, Naomi Watts, you've got chapters here on everything from your own infertility story to skin care and what we might want to wear as women age. If I were to sum up the most important advice you're offering to women based on your own journey, would it be that, look, if you're feeling out of control, if you're feeling unsure about what's happening to your body, get yourself to the doctor, advocate for yourself, ask for help?
WATTS: Yeah, absolutely.
KELLY: How did you learn how to do that?
WATTS: It took a long time. It really did. I flailed around in secrecy and shame before I could piecemeal information and get myself into a place where I felt brave enough to speak to others. My doctor walked me through the whole hormone therapy, the world of that, so I was able to deal with symptom relief very quickly because I was suffering. And I had been filling out plenty of medical forms for years, saying that I was suffering night sweats. I had no idea they were connected to menopause (laughter). I just thought menopause was hot flashes and that's it. And how dumb of me, but that's all that was available, really.
KELLY: Well, if I may, I would say not dumb at all. You can't know what you don't know, and what you don't know what to ask for. Stay on this for a second. The HRT - hormone replacement therapy - it has been really controversial. The advice has been all over the map. You're not a doctor, you know, you're not prescribing anything here, but you do weigh in with the strong view that HRT is an excellent option for many women and that it is safer than we have been led to believe. Elaborate on that.
WATTS: Yeah. I'm not trying to profess to be a doctor at all. I want everyone to investigate this based on their medical history. But I do encourage people to go to a doctor who is going to give them the full spectrum of options based on their medical history. As far as I am concerned, it has offered me great help with symptom relief. You know, I was going through nights of changing my clothes and setting towels down and moving to one side of the bed to the other, you know. And when you're not able to sleep and you're going through those night sweats, it can cause a whole barrage of other symptoms like anxiety the next day, brain fog, depression - the list goes on. So I really needed to get my symptoms under control.
KELLY: And can we just be specific for a second here? - 'cause hormone replacement therapy sounds like this really scary thing. For you, it was what, like a little dot that you put on your hip or something?
WATTS: Well, there are many different ways to distribute, and I started with just a spray of estrogen. And I've certainly moved around from one thing to the next, progressed in dosages and different forms of distribution. I then went to a patch, and then I went to a pill. And now I'm on a gel, and it's coupled with progesterone. So it takes time to research it, and as I said, everybody has to come at it on their own terms with their doctor.
KELLY: You end the book by asking, what if the point of menopause is to break up with our former self?
WATTS: Yes.
KELLY: Like, to leave behind who we were, embrace this whole new chapter of exploring and experimenting.
WATTS: Yes.
KELLY: And I read that, and I thought, how great is that?
WATTS: Yeah. It's like a return to yourself. You're not being governed by hormones anymore, making odd decisions (laughter) sometimes.
KELLY: (Laughter) Well, I don't know. I can't blame all of my odd decisions on hormones.
WATTS: No, definitely not, but I think it can be freeing. Now, perhaps the kids are grown enough, or they've left the house already or, depending how and when it hits you, maybe I can focus on me a bit more. What do I want here? You know, am I happy in my job? Am I happy in my marriage? Have I done enough? And yeah, for me, I - there have been some great new things. And I've been, yes, pinching myself for many years, for a number of great things that have taken place in my life. I got married just recently.
KELLY: Congratulations.
WATTS: That was a big thing (laughter).
KELLY: Yeah.
WATTS: Yeah. I didn't expect to meet someone at this point in my life, you know? If I was in my 20s, I never would have predicted that. Things are possible, still (laughter). It's definitely not the end. We are not invisible.
KELLY: Yeah. Amen to that. Yeah.
WATTS: I'm looking at the women in these films lately, particularly this year. There's a number - more than a handful - of great, dynamic stories about women in this age group, which are really wonderful stories, and that's heartening to me. So I do think there's a massive change taking place, and it's wonderful to witness.
KELLY: That is the actor and now also writer, Naomi Watts. Her new book is "Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I'd Known About Menopause." Naomi Watts, thank you.
WATTS: Thank you so much, Mary Louise.
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