Liev Schreiber Played Hard To Get, Naomi Watts Says

Liev Schreiber wouldn’t make the first move, so Naomi Watts took matters into her own hands.

The actress recalled how she met her partner at the Met Gala in 2005, but he was a bit too passive for her tastes. So she decided to be a bit bolder than usual.

As she told Allure, the move paid off.

“It was a lot more ballsy than I would ever normally be,” the Diana actress said “Normally I want a guy to make the first move, and he wasn’t. Then he got up to say he was leaving and I was like, ‘Oh s–t. Probably another couple years are going to pass by.'”

She added, “I was wildly attracted to him and his work, so I said something cheeky as he was about to walk out. I said, ‘Don’t you want my digits?’ Because I couldn’t possibly say, ‘Would you like my phone number?’ It made him laugh. He texted me five minutes later saying, ‘Would you like to go for a drink now?’ And I said, ‘No, I’ll meet you for breakfast tomorrow.’ ”

But Naomi’s work wasn’t over. As Liev Schreiber recalled, she pulled some strings to ensure that the relationship could continue.

“When we met, I said to Naomi, ‘I am really crazy about you, but I don’t know that I can live in L.A., and is that okay?’ ” he told Vulture in June. “Naomi forced [producers] to hire me [on the film ‘The Painted Veil’]. She wanted to continue our relationship, and the only way to do that was to take me on the road with her … We wanted to be together, and I’m decent enough to handle that role. It wasn’t, like, total nepotism.”

The couple has been together ever since, and now has two boys together — 6-year-old Alexander and 4-year-old Samuel.

For all their public admissions of love, it’s unclear if Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts are actually married or not. In January 2010, Naomi was quoted as saying that Liev gave her a ring, but that they weren’t rushing into marriage. But in June of this year, Liev referred to Naomi as his wife.