Watts Teams With Norton In 'Painted Veil'

"The Painted Veil" is based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham and centers on a rich, self-involved flapper girl in 1920s England played by "Ring" star Naomi Watts.

Watts' character Kitty is of the marrying age and people are pressuring her to find a husband. She finally meets a doctor, played by Edward Norton, who brings her with him to a China where he will be practicing.

Once the couple arrives in China, Kitty embarks on affair with a man played by Watt's real life love, Liev Schreiber. After the affair, Norton's character, Walter, accepts a post in a remote village and takes his wife with him. There, the couple begins to heal.

"They become better versions of themselves," Watts told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "Basically, they are affected so deeply by what's going on around them — the people near them, the beauty of the atmosphere. So, yeah, they fall in love with each other and then learn more about themselves in the process."

Watts said she and Norton had been talking about making a movie together for about four years and Norton had been attached to the film for more than seven years. It's a film that Watts said forced her to grow and change.

"It's a strange journey," she said. "It's never completely calculated. It's a lot to do with the directors and the characters absolutely have to have some kind of transformation. I like to believe I am playing women that learn something in the process of that story."

The movie was shot in China and Watts said the experience was "extraordinary."

"First of all, we were in Beijing and Shanghai and then down to the deep south where you see all those beautiful mountains and you cannot believe the landscape. It's breathtaking everywhere you look," she said. "So it was really so much a part of the film."