Nicole Kidman: Balancing act. The Oscar winner remembers some In other chapters of his filmography, he talks to us about the film “Babygirl” – his performance was awarded the Coppa Volpi at the 2024 Venice Film Festival – and the television series “The Perfect Couple,” which will air on Netflix from September.
Text by IRA MADISON III
Photo: MATTHEW BROOKES
Styling JASON BOLDEN
Nicole Kidman makes the transition from big-budget popcorn flicks (“Aquaman”) to art-house cinema (“The Killing of a Sacred Deer”) with ease. It’s no surprise, then, that AMC Theatres chose her to get audiences excited about going to the movies again. The “We come to this place to experience magic” commercial has been passed around ad nauseam and Kidman has been interviewed ad nauseam, so this was the last thing I wanted to talk about when I met her; we focused instead on her career and upcoming projects, including the Netflix crime drama “The Perfect Couple” with Liev Schreiber (out September 5) and the erotic thriller “Babygirl” with Harris Dickinson and Antonio Banderas (out December 20).
See Nicole Kidman in the backstage video of the cover story of L’OFFICIEL Italy September 2024
It’s the Fourth of July weekend, and on the day of our Zoom meeting, 57-year-old Kidman seems alert and curious. She’s fascinated by the art that forms the backdrop of my residence, a house I’ve rented for the weekend on Fire Island. Kidman tells me she’s been to this gay mecca twice. “Have you ever been to wild parties?” I reply that I’ve attended several this weekend alone. “That’s what happens there,” he replies. The second time Kidman visited Fire Island, she went to an Independence Day party. “I got a lot of love.” Can you imagine walking down the avenue on Fire Island and running into Nicole Kidman? She laughs and says, “I was wearing a hat.” As if a hat could effectively disguise one of the most instantly recognizable movie stars.
Top and pants by BOTTEGA VENETA; bustier dress, BALENCIAGA; watch, OMEGA.
She has recently starred in popular television series such as “Big Little Lies,” “Expats,” “The Undoing,” and the upcoming “The Perfect Couple,” based on the novel of the same name by Elin Hilderbrand. Kidman plays a famous novelist who is about to marry off one of her three sons to Amelia Sacks, played by Eve Hewson, who is not part of Greer’s high society. When a body is found on a beach on their wedding day, everyone is a suspect, including herself. “I fell in love with the long format because I like to build characters,” she says. “It doesn’t take up a lot of time, but it still has a cinematic feel. It’s more like slow motion than a movie where you only have two hours to tell the story and build a character.” “ The Perfect Couple” reunites Kidman with director Susanne Bier, who directed her in HBO’s “The Undoing.” In this latest season, Kidman was unaware that she was a murder suspect. Instead, she plays a matriarch who may have committed murder. “Greer is incredible. She’s a matriarch. She’s tough, but she’s a mother bear. She protects her children; she’s very smart and very complicated. I like her inscrutability, her ability to survive.” At this point, the actress has done almost everything.
She has been nominated for five Academy Awards and won one (Best Actress in 2003 for “The Hours”), has won six of her 17 Golden Globe nominations, and two Emmys for the popular HBO series “Big Little Lies.” She has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 1994, a UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women) ambassador since 2006, and a Balenciaga brand ambassador . She lives in Sydney, Nashville, and New York with her husband, Keith Urban, a country singer, and their two daughters, Sunday and Faith. “I’m willing to travel, which a lot of people aren’t,” Kidman says of her work. “My children love to travel… maybe less so now (as they’re older), but they’re also very interested in the world. They say they have a lot of stamps in their passports, more than most people in the 1980s. That’s because as children they lived in Morocco (where Kidman filmed Werner Herzog’s “Queen of the Desert”), and then we went to the Algerian desert, where they spent three and a half months riding camels and filming in the souks. They’ve lived in France, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Asia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, everywhere.”
She was nominated for five Oscars and won one (Best Actress in 2003 for “The Hours”), received six of 17 Golden Globe nominations and won two Emmys for the HBO series “Big Little Lies”.
Hat, CELINE BY HEDI SLIMANE; Earrings, LIZZIE MANDLER.
Kidman considers her work part of her global education. “It has given me an empathetic heart and given me access to other people’s lives that I would never have had otherwise. I read a lot. I don’t think it’s positive to live only in your own country. I was raised to always try to understand, learn, and see different perspectives. That’s probably why I travel. It allows me to better understand how people see their country in relation to the world. I’m teaching my children that work, even work done in solidarity, is not just about you,” she says. “I read a very interesting article about a woman donating her kidney to her friend, who didn’t recognize the gift. This caused a rift between them. If you do something for philanthropy or a good cause, you shouldn’t expect anything in return. Our duty and purpose in the world is to help others, not to receive praise. I firmly believe in that.” For this reason, Kidman finds it difficult to accept awards for humanitarian work. “I feel deeply uncomfortable,” he says. “There are times when you have to be present because it means more people will donate or more light will be shed on the issue. It can’t be a selfish thing.”
Kidman also believes that films have the potential to bring about positive change in the world. After playing domestic violence victim Celeste Wright in “Big Little Lies,” she felt “a lot more understanding and a greater connection with the people who have experienced this abuse.” Also eye-opening was her role as Nancy Eamons, the wife of a Baptist minister (Russell Crowe), whose son (Lucas Hedges) undergoes conversion therapy for homosexuality in “Prodigal Son . ” “A very small film, but important to me. Did it get the fame it needed? No, but it certainly shed light (on the horrors of conversion therapy). So many people come up to me and say, ‘Thank you, you helped my family with this film.'” There are roles where I think, ‘That was so hard, but the real adventure was incredible.’ And it’s so etched into my psyche that I can go back and dream about it and say, ‘I was in that place and that was me.'” I’ve lived in these mountains, or in this desert, or in a tent, or on a camel. I hiked a mountain in Belfast that resembled where the Vikings stayed. These are things no one else gets to do. I hiked through the forests of Sweden in the dead of winter with Lars von Trier (for 2003’s “Dogville”) and thought, “Where am I? What am I doing here?” I’ve been to Thailand, deep in the forests where prisoners of war were held during World War II (in 2013’s “The Railway Man”), and seen the railways they built. When would I ever have been there?
Skirt, BALMAIN; earrings, LIZZIE MANDLER.
“I’ve lived in these mountains or in this desert, in a tent or on a camel. I hiked a mountain in Belfast that resembled the Viking haunt. These are things no one else can do.” Nicole Kidman
Coat and shoes by ALAïA.
“Everyone asks me, ‘ Why are you doing this?’ I say, ‘Because I want to kiss Batman!'” It’s about trying things you’ve never done before.
Bustier dress, BALENCIAGA.
Long dress, BALENCIAGA; watch, OMEGA.
One of the highlights of Kidman’s AFI Lifetime Achievement Award speech in April was her inclusion of (almost) all the directors she has worked with throughout her career. Kidman said she originally wanted to name all the countries she has filmed in, but that probably went a bit too far. She also immediately apologized for inadvertently excluding some directors. “There are a lot of directors on that list, and I left some out.” “I left James Wan out, which was devastating for me,” he says. She worked with Wan on both “Aquaman” (2018) and its sequel, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” (2023), two superhero films in the vein of Joel Schumacher’s campy “Batman Forever” (1995), Kidman’s first foray into the DC Comics universe. What draws you to take on roles that some would say an actress of your caliber should turn down? Regarding “Batman Forever,” he recalls: “Everyone asks me, ‘Why are you doing this?’ I say, ‘Because I want to kiss Batman!'” It’s about trying things you’ve never done before. “What people don’t understand is that it’s not about the bills. A lot of the big mainstream blockbusters I do are, hopefully, different,” he says. When Wan first approached her about “Aquaman,” she actually thought it was a horror project. “I really wanted to work with him on a horror film.”
Shirt, trousers and tie, RALPH LAUREN; earrings, LIZZIE MANDLER.
He has acted in several psychological thrillers, such as “The Others” and “Stoker.” I tell her that “Stoker” is one of my favorite films, and she replies, “Nobody ever talks about ‘Stoker’ (directed by Park Chan-wook), I love it. The monologue was the reason I did it.” It’s no surprise that an intense monologue has an appeal for any actor, although Kidman has a particular ability to express intense emotion, such as in “Birth,” when the camera lingers on the pain in her face for two minutes. “In ‘The Northman,’ it’s not a monologue, but a scene shot by Robert Eggers in almost a single take, in which I seduce Alexander Skarsgård in the role of his mother. I love that scene, too.” “Of course, I feel things very, very, very deeply,” says Kidman. ” My mother always said that the way I was raised made me a very sensitive child. Part of my life journey has also been learning not to have so much empathy for other people that I destroy or sabotage myself, because I can get under other people’s skin in a very strange way and hurt them psychologically. It’s almost an attraction. I can express it physically and emotionally. It can be frightening at times.”
Long dress, BALENCIAGA; watch, OMEGA.
“Part of my life’s journey is learning not to be so overly compassionate with people that I destroy or sabotage myself.”
The upcoming film “Babygirl,” in which Kidman plays a business executive who becomes entangled in a forbidden romance with a younger employee (Harris Dickinson), is “very tough because it’s so emotionally deep.” Doing something like “The Perfect Pair” is a good counterbalance instead. The actress also loves the theater, though she hasn’t been on stage since “Photograph 51″ in the West End in 2015. ” I want to do something on stage, but I have to choose carefully at the moment. I don’t want to get sick or so drained that I can’t give my best. That’s deeply honest about my abilities. As Lawrence Olivier said, “Are you trying acting?” Yes, I do act, but at the same time, there’s a part of me that, when attached to the right role, is all-encompassing and frightening. I have to be careful.” Horror, surprisingly, is one of the actress’s favorite genres. I ask her to recommend a horror film, and she promptly replies: “The Australian ‘Talk to Me,’ have you seen it?” I nod and tell her I found it terrifying. I haven’t done a classic horror film yet. A hardcore horror film. I suggest it because I watch hardcore horror. I’m a Ti West fan!
Rock, BALMAIN.
Hair: Adir Abergel @a-frame Agency
Make-up: Kate Synnott @the wall group
Production : Michael “Skiny” Power @Cowboys and Indians
Props Stylist: Jamie Dean @W alter Schupfer
Photo assistant: Kurt Mangum, Kendall Pack and Arden Core