Naomi Watts as Diana

The release of Diana, the movie about the last two years of Princess Diana’s life, coincides with the dramatic news that British police have received fresh information about the August 1997 car crash deaths of the Princess and Dodi Fayed. The announcement that detectives are looking into whether the deaths were ” a criminal act” is sure to boost interest in the movie, which stars Naomi Watts as the Princess and Naveen Andrews as her secret lover, Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnet Khan. The allegation was passed to detectives through the parents-in-law of a former soldier who claims Diana and Dodi were killed by a member of the British SAS. Although the movie concentrates on the Princess’s romance with Hasnet Khan, it also depicts her affair with Dodi Fayed and shows them leaving the Ritz hotel in Paris just before the black Mercedes in which they were passengers crashed in the Pont de l’alma Tunnel. Dodi’s father, Mohammed Al-Fayed, has always claimed that they were murdered by the British establishment. Naomi Watts, who talked with HFPA members about the movie and the difficulties in portraying somebody as well-known as the late Princess,  said of Diana’s brief romance with Fayed: “It was very sad that it just ended up in such tragedy. My heart goes out to the Fayed family as well. From the research I did, although they knew each other and met in the early ’80s, their relationship—and it was definitely a romance—was very short-lived.”