Naomi Watts Made the First Move on Partner Liev Schreiber

— -- If Naomi Watts hadn’t made a bold move the second time she ran into Liev Schreiber, the parents of two might not be together today.

Schreiber shared the story of how the Hollywood couple met in the August issue of Esquire.

It was 2005 and he was attending the Met Gala with Elijah Wood in New York City when he spotted Watts, whom he called a “ray of light.” The pair had been cursorily introduced a few years earlier.

"She said, 'What are you doing later on -- you want to go dancing?' And I was like, 'Yeah,'” Schreiber recalled in the magazine. “So I went down to this club that she told me to meet her at, and of course she was there with Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, and I'm kind of standing around like a bump on a log, waiting for my turn.”

Feeling awkward and self-conscious “because all these movie stars were hovering,” Schreiber said he knew, “I wasn't going to make a good impression.”

So he told Watts: “I'm sorry, but I gotta go home.”

What happened next was completely out of character for Watts.

“She chased me outside and said, 'Don't you want my digits?’”

“It was the first thing that came to me,” Watts told the magazine. “I’ve never said those words before in my life and never since.”

The next day, the pair went out for cupcakes and the date ended with a kiss. Watts returned to Los Angeles and Schreiber began emailing her.

"I decided I was going to make a family with this person. For better or for worse, I stepped into a partnership with somebody,” he said. “We were gonna bring kids into this world and try to love and respect each other.”

The couple have been together ever since and welcomed son Alexander “Sasha” Pete in July 2007 and son Samuel “Sammy” Kai in December 2008.