Naomi Watts on acting "The Impossible"

(CBS News) With the Oscars just two weeks away, Lee Cowan meets with Best Actress nominee Naomi Watts . . . THE ENVELOPE PLEASE:

It ranks among the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

On December 26, 2004, a massive tsunami tore across Southeast Asia, killing some 230,000 people.

The world sat stunned -- anxious to help, but largely helpless from so far away. At least that's how actress Naomi Watts felt.

"Just remember turning on the TV and being glued to it, but I still felt like -- it felt like a long way away."

A long away away, until Watts traveled to the once-battered coastline of Thailand to begin filming a movie ABOUT the tsunami, appropriately titled, "The Impossible."

Her realistic performance of a real-life event now has her in the running for an Oscar.

It's a true story, based on Maria Belon and her family, vacationing from Spain when the tsunami hit.

Miraculously, she, her husband, and all three of her children survived the tsunami, and returned to Spain.

"I was there, I was under the water, I was struggling," Belon said. "You feel thousands of things at the same time in a very, very strong way."

At first, Naomi Watts was nervous about playing Maria, wondering if it was even appropriate. "I don't want her to relive any more trauma, she's clearly been through way too much," Watts said.

Maria was nervous, too. Would Hollywood get it right? Besides she admits, she was a bit star-struck.

"Before this film happen, if you ask me which is your favorite actress, I would always answer Naomi Watts," she said.

Watts told Cowan that when she first met the woman she was to play on screen, she almost said nothing at first. "Yeah, I walked into the room and we just sort of sat opposite each other, and it was okay to be silent and look at each other. And then her eyes starting welling up, and mine did, too."

"I started to cry, like maybe I'm doing now," Belon said. "I got really emotional just remembering this moment. I said, you know, it's a big responsibility what you have and I have, because you're not going to portray Maria, you're going to portray all the moms during the tsunami."

For six weeks they shot in a giant water tank, with Watts being battered around like a rag doll -- challenging for any actor, but especially Naomi Watts.

"Do you look at the water any differently now?" Cowan asked.

"I think I do, yeah," she replied.

After moving from her native England to Australia when she was just 14, Watts and her mother nearly drowned in a rip tide: "I got to the point where I was giving up and my mum didn't. And she found sand and she was able to pull me in."

In the film, she's pull in, too, brought to a group of Thai women who dress her and tend to her wounds. It's an emotional scene that Watts says she couldn't play without Maria's help.

"I just held her hand. I said, 'Maria ...,' and then she sort of just held my hand, and I just felt all her energy and all of her, you know, pain and troubles, you know?"

"I gave her all my love, all the love I got from these people back to her, so she was able to put on the scene," Maris said.

Naomi Watts wanted to be an actress from an early age. She moved to Hollywood with a five-year plan. But it soon turned into 10.

"You talk about going to these auditions and just the rejection over and over and over again. It does get personal after a while, I would imagine," said Cowan.

"Oh my God, I mean I consider myself fairly sensitive, but I don't think a strong person could cope with it over and over again, and ten years of it," Watts said. "There were moments where I was sure I was done."

"Did you ever think about quitting? Giving Up?"

"Oh yeah, but I didn't have a B-plan really, I didn't!" she laughed.

One of her best friends from Australia is fellow actress Nicole Kidman, whom Watts said advised her: "It's just gonna take one thing, one thing 'Nay,' and you know, if you're in a hit film, then everything changes.' And that's what happened. She was right."

The film was David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive."

"Did you know that this was going to make the difference?" Cowan asked.

"No, actually. I thought I was doing a ridiculous performance," she replied. "Everything was Aaaaaaaah! I'm like, 'Who acts like that?'"

Two years later she was nominated for an Oscar for "21 Grams," opposite Sean Penn.

And then came Kong.

"I remember calling up David Lynch who's, you know, my mentor, and he said to me, 'Naomi, anyone who sits in the hand of King Kong is a movie star for life!'" she laughed.

At 44 she is indeed a movie star, with enough wattage to have taken on the controversial role of playing Princess Diana, for a film due out this later year.

"I like complicated women," she said. "I like women with strength and contradictions, and she embodies all of those things."

But this year, she plans on cutting back a bit, to spend more time with her family. She lives with actor Liev Shreiber and their two children.

"In theory, yeah," she said of cutting back. "I mean, get back to me on it!"

Family is important. Watts' own parents divorced when she was four. Her father, a sound engineer for the band Pink Floyd, died when Naomi was just seven. "It's a very sad thing for a child to have only one parent. To have a missing parent, it's not fair," she said.

She'll be missing him especially that night in Los Angeles, when she walks down the most famous red carpet in the world. He'd be proud, Watts said.

Her cheering section, however, will stretch across the globe, to one very special fan -- and friend.

"This performance deserves everything, everything," said Maria Belon. "I'll be crossing my fingers from Spain, hoping that justice will be made."

For more info:

• "The Impossible" (Official site)