Nicole Kidman

Nicole Mary Kidman born 20 June 1967 is an Australian actress, singer, and producer. She has received an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. She was ranked among the world’s highest-paid actresses in 2006, 2018 and 2019. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and again in 2018. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her fifth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century up to that point.

Kidman began her acting career in Australia with the 1983 films Bush Christmas and BMX Bandits. Her breakthrough came in 1989 with the thriller film Dead Calm and the miniseries Bangkok Hilton. In 1990, she made her Hollywood debut in the racing film Days of Thunder, opposite Tom Cruise. She went on to achieve wider recognition with lead roles in Far and Away (1992), Batman Forever (1995), To Die For (1995) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Kidman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for portraying the writer Virginia Woolf in the drama The Hours (2002). Her other Oscar-nominated roles were as a courtesan in the musical Moulin Rouge! (2001) and emotionally troubled mothers in the dramas Rabbit Hole (2010) and Lion (2016).

Kidman’s other film credits include The Others (2001), Cold Mountain (2003), Dogville (2003), Birth (2004), Australia (2008), The Paperboy (2012), Paddington (2014), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Destroyer (2018), Aquaman (2018) and Bombshell (2019).

Kidman’s television roles include Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012), Big Little Lies (2017–2019), Top of the Lake: China Girl (2017), and The Undoing (2020). For Big Little Lies, she won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress and Outstanding Limited Series (as executive producer).

Kidman has been a Goodwill ambassador for UNICEF since 1994 and for UNIFEM since 2006. In 2006, she was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia. Since she was born to Australian parents in Hawaii, Kidman holds dual citizenship of Australia and the United States. In 2010, she founded the production company Blossom Films. She was married to actor Tom Cruise from 1990 to 2001, and has been married to country music singer Keith Urban since 2006.

Early life

Nicole Mary Kidman was born on 20 June 1967 in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were temporarily in the United States on student visas. Her mother, Janelle Ann (née Glenny), is a nursing instructor who edited her husband’s books and was a member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby; her father, Antony Kidman, was a biochemist, clinical psychologist and author. Kidman has Irish and Scottish ancestry.

Being born in Hawaii, she was given the Hawaiian name “Hōkūlani”, meaning “heavenly star”. The inspiration came from a baby elephant born around the same time at the Honolulu Zoo.

When Kidman was born, her father was a graduate student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He became a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health of the United States. Opposed to the war in Vietnam, Kidman’s parents participated in anti-war protests while living in Washington, D.C. The family returned to Australia when Kidman was four and her mother now lives on Sydney’s North Shore. Kidman has a younger sister, Antonia Kidman, a journalist and TV presenter.

Kidman grew up in Sydney and attended Lane Cove Public School and North Sydney Girls’ High School. She was enrolled in ballet at three and showed her natural talent for acting in her primary and high school years. She has said she first aspired to become an actress upon watching Margaret Hamilton’s performance as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Kidman has revealed that she was timid as a child, saying, “I am very shy – really shy – I even had a stutter as a kid, which I slowly got over, but I still regress into that shyness. So I don’t like walking into a crowded restaurant by myself; I don’t like going to a party by myself.”

She initially studied at the Phillip Street Theatre in Sydney, alongside Naomi Watts who had attended the same high school. She also attended the Australian Theatre for Young People. Here she took up drama, mime and performing in her teens, finding acting to be a refuge. Owing to her fair skin and naturally red hair, the Australian sun forced the young Kidman to rehearse in halls of the theatre. A regular at the Phillip Street Theatre, she received praise and encouragement to pursue acting full-time.

Career

Beginnings (1983–1994)

In 1983, aged 16, Kidman made her film debut in a remake of the Australian holiday season favourite Bush Christmas. By the end of 1983, she had a supporting role in the television series Five Mile Creek. In 1984, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, which caused Kidman to halt her acting work temporarily while she studied massage so she could help her mother with physical therapy. She began gaining popularity in the mid-1980s after appearing in several film roles, including BMX Bandits (1983), Watch the Shadows Dance (1987 aka Nightmaster), and the romantic comedy Windrider (1986), which earned Kidman attention due to her racy scenes. Also during the decade, she appeared in several Australian productions, including the soap opera A Country Practice and the 1987 miniseries Vietnam. She also made guest appearances on Australian television programs and TV movies.

In 1988, Kidman appeared in Emerald City, based on the play of the same name. The Australian film earned her an Australian Film Institute award for Best Supporting Actress. Kidman next starred with Sam Neill in Dead Calm (1989) as Rae Ingram, playing the wife of a naval officer. The thriller brought Kidman to international recognition; Variety commented: “Throughout the film, Kidman is excellent. She gives the character of Rae real tenacity and energy.” Meanwhile, critic Roger Ebert noted the excellent chemistry between the leads, stating, “Kidman and Zane do generate real, palpable hatred in their scenes together.” She followed that up with the Australian miniseries Bangkok Hilton. She next moved on to star alongside her then-boyfriend and future husband, Tom Cruise, in the 1990 auto racing film Days of Thunder, as a young doctor who falls in love with a NASCAR driver. It is Kidman’s American debut and was among the highest-grossing films of the year.

In 1991, she co-starred with Thandie Newton and former classmate Naomi Watts in the Australian independent film Flirting. They portrayed high school girls in this coming of age story, which won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film. That same year, her work in the film Billy Bathgate earned Kidman her first Golden Globe Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actress. The New York Times, in its film review, called her “a beauty with, it seems, a sense of humor”. The following year, she and Cruise re-teamed for Ron Howard’s Irish epic Far and Away (1992), which was a modest critical and commercial success. In 1993, she starred in the thriller Malice opposite Alec Baldwin and the drama My Life opposite Michael Keaton.

Worldwide recognition (1995–2003)

In 1995, Kidman played Dr. Chase Meridian, the damsel in distress, in the superhero film Batman Forever, opposite Val Kilmer as the film’s title character. The same year, she starred in Gus Van Sant’s critically acclaimed dark comedy To Die For, in which she played the murderous newscaster Suzanne Stone. Of Kidman’s Golden Globe Award-winning performance, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said ” brings to the role layers of meaning, intention and impulse. Telling her story in close-up – as she does throughout the film – Kidman lets you see the calculation, the wheels turning, the transparent efforts to charm that succeed in charming all the same.” Kidman next appeared, alongside Barbara Hershey and John Malkovich, in The Portrait of a Lady (1996), based on the novel of the same name, and starred in The Peacemaker (1997) as White House nuclear expert Dr. Julia Kelly, opposite George Clooney. The latter film grossed US$110 million worldwide. Kidman starred in comedy Practical Magic (1998) with Sandra Bullock as two witch sisters who face a curse which threatens to prevent them ever finding lasting love. While the film opened atop the chart on its North American opening weekend, it flopped at the box office. She returned to her work on stage the same year in the David Hare play The Blue Room, which opened in London.

In 1999, Kidman reunited with then husband, Tom Cruise, to portray a Manhattan couple on a sexual odyssey, in Eyes Wide Shut, the final film of director Stanley Kubrick. It was subject to censorship controversies due to the explicit nature of its sex scenes. After a brief hiatus and a highly publicised divorce from Cruise, Kidman returned to the screen to play a mail-order bride in the British-American drama Birthday Girl. In 2001, Kidman played the cabaret actress and courtesan Satine in Baz Luhrmann’s musical Moulin Rouge!, opposite Ewan McGregor. Her performance and her singing received positive reviews; Paul Clinton of CNN.com called it her best work since To Die For, and wrote ” is smoldering and stunning as Satine. She moves with total confidence throughout the film Kidman seems to specialize in ‘ice queen’ characters, but with Satine, she allows herself to thaw, just a bit.” Subsequently, Kidman received her second Golden Globe Award, for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, as well as many other acting awards and nominations. She also received her first Academy Award nomination, for Best Actress.

Kidman also starred in Alejandro Amenábar’s horror film The Others (2001), as Grace Stewart, a mother living in the Channel Islands during World War II who suspects her house is haunted. Grossing over US$210 million worldwide, the film also earned several Goya Award nominations, including a Best Actress nomination for Kidman. She received her second BAFTA Award and fifth Golden Globe Award nominations. Roger Ebert commented that “Alejandro Amenábar has the patience to create a languorous, dreamy atmosphere, and Nicole Kidman succeeds in convincing us that she is a normal person in a disturbing situation, and not just a standard-issue horror movie hysteric.” Kidman was named the World’s Most Beautiful Person by People magazine in 2002.

In 2002, Kidman won critical praise for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours, which stars Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. Kidman famously wore prosthetics that were applied to her nose making her almost unrecognizable playing the author during her time in 1920s England, and her bouts with depression and mental illness while trying to write her novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The film earned positive notices and several nominations, including for an Academy Award for Best Picture. The New York Times wrote that, “Ms. Kidman, in a performance of astounding bravery, evokes the savage inner war waged by a brilliant mind against a system of faulty wiring that transmits a searing, crazy static into her brain”. Kidman won numerous critics’ awards, including her first BAFTA Award, third Golden Globe Award, and the Academy Award for Best Actress. As the first Australian actress to win an Academy Award, Kidman made a teary acceptance speech about the importance of art, even during times of war, saying, “Why do you come to the Academy Awards when the world is in such turmoil? Because art is important. And because you believe in what you do and you want to honour that, and it is a tradition that needs to be upheld.”

Following her Oscar win, Kidman appeared in three very different films in 2003. The first, a leading role in Dogville, by Danish director Lars von Trier, was an experimental film set on a bare soundstage. Though the film divided critics in the United States, Kidman still earned praise for her performance. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine stated: “Kidman gives the most emotionally bruising performance of her career in Dogville, a movie that never met a cliche it didn’t stomp on.” The second was an adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain, opposite Anthony Hopkins. Her third film was Anthony Minghella’s war drama Cold Mountain. Kidman appeared opposite Jude Law and Renée Zellweger, playing Southerner Ada Monroe, who is in love with Law’s character and separated by the Civil War. TIME magazine wrote, “Kidman takes strength from Ada’s plight and grows steadily, literally luminous. Her sculptural pallor gives way to warm radiance in the firelight”. The film garnered several award nominations and wins for its actors; Kidman received her sixth Golden Globe Award nomination at the 61st Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress.

Continued success (2004–2009)

In 2004 she starred in the film Birth, which sparked controversy over a scene in which Kidman shares a bath with her co-star Cameron Bright, then aged ten. At a press conference at the Venice Film Festival, she addressed the controversy saying, “It wasn’t that I wanted to make a film where I kiss a 10-year-old boy. I wanted to make a film where you understand love”. Kidman received her seventh Golden Globe nomination, for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama. That same year, she appeared as a successful producer in the black comedy-science-fiction film The Stepford Wives, a remake of the 1975 film of the same name, directed by Frank Oz. In 2005, Kidman appeared opposite Sean Penn in the Sydney Pollack thriller The Interpreter, playing UN translator Silvia Broome, and with Will Ferrell in the romantic comedy Bewitched, based on the 1960s TV sitcom of the same name. While neither film fared well in the United States, both were international successes. Kidman and Ferrell earned the Razzie Award for Worst Screen Couple.

In conjunction with her success within the film industry, Kidman became the face of the Chanel No. 5 perfume brand. She starred in a campaign of television and print ads with Rodrigo Santoro, directed by Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann, to promote the fragrance during the holiday seasons of 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2008. The three-minute commercial produced for Chanel No. 5 made Kidman the record holder for the most money paid per minute to an actor after she reportedly earned US$12 million for the three-minute advert. During this time, Kidman was also featured as the 45th Most Powerful Celebrity on the 2005 Forbes Celebrity 100 List. She made a reported US$14.5 million in 2004–2005. On People magazine’s list of 2005’s highest-paid actresses, Kidman was second behind Julia Roberts, with US$16–17 million per-film price tag. Nintendo in 2007 announced that Kidman would be the new face of Nintendo’s advertising campaign for the Nintendo DS game More Brain Training in its European market.

In 2006, Kidman portrayed photographer Diane Arbus in the biographical film Fur, opposite Robert Downey Jr., and lent her voice to the animated film Happy Feet, which grossed over US$384 million worldwide. In 2007, she starred in the science-fiction film The Invasion directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, a remake of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and starred opposite Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black in Noah Baumbach’s comedy-drama Margot at the Wedding, which earned her a Satellite Award nomination for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy. She also starred in the fantasy-adventure, The Golden Compass (2007), playing the villainous Marisa Coulter.

In 2008, she reunited with Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann in the Australian period film Australia, set in the remote Northern Territory during the Japanese attack on Darwin during World War II. Kidman starred opposite Hugh Jackman as an Englishwoman feeling overwhelmed by the continent. The acting was praised and the movie was a box office success worldwide. Kidman appeared in the 2009 Rob Marshall musical Nine, portraying the Federico Fellini-like character’s muse, Claudia Jenssen, with fellow Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz and Sophia Loren. Kidman, whose screen time was brief in comparison to the other actresses, performed the musical number “Unusual Way”, alongside Day-Lewis. The film received several Golden Globe Award and Academy Award nominations, and earned Kidman a fourth Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, as part of the Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Biographical and independent films (2010–2015)

In 2010, Kidman starred with Aaron Eckhart in the film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole, for which she vacated her role in the Woody Allen picture You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Her portrayal as a grieving mother in the film earned her critical acclaim, and received nominations for the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards. She lent her voice to a promotional video that Australia used to support its bid to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup. In 2011, she starred alongside Nicolas Cage in director Joel Schumacher’s action-thriller Trespass, with the stars playing a married couple taken hostage, and appeared with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston in Dennis Dugan’s romantic comedy Just Go with It, as a trophy wife.

In 2012, Kidman and Clive Owen starred in the HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn, and about Ernest Hemingway and his relationship with Martha Gellhorn. In Lee Daniels’ adaptation of the Pete Dexter novel, The Paperboy (2012), she portrayed death row groupie Charlotte Bless, and performed sex scenes that she claims not to have remembered until seeing the finished film. The film competed in the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and Kidman’s performance drew nominations for the SAG and the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, gave Kidman her second Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and her tenth nomination overall. In 2012, Kidman’s audiobook recording of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse was released at Audible.com. Kidman starred as an unstable mother in Park Chan-wook’s Stoker (2013), to a positive response and a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In April 2013 she was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2014, Kidman starred in the biographical film Grace of Monaco in the title role that chronicles the 1962 crisis, in which Charles de Gaulle blockaded the tiny principality, angered by Monaco’s status as a tax haven for wealthy French subjects and Kelly’s contemplating a Hollywood return to star in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie. Opening out of competition at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, the film received largely negative reviews. Kidman also starred in two films with Colin Firth that year, the first being the British-Australian historical drama The Railway Man, in which Kidman played an officer’s wife. Katherine Monk of the Montreal Gazette said of Kidman’s performance, “It’s a truly masterful piece of acting that transcends Teplitzky’s store-bought framing, but it’s Kidman who delivers the biggest surprise: For the first time since her eyebrows turned into solid marble arches, the Australian Oscar winner is truly terrific”. Her second film with Firth was the British thriller film Before I Go To Sleep, portraying a car crash survivor with brain damage. She also appeared in the family film Paddington (2014) as a villain.

In 2015, Kidman starred in the drama Strangerland, which opened at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and the Jason Bateman-directed The Family Fang, produced by Kidman’s production company, Blossom Films, which premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. In her other 2015 film release, the biographical drama Queen of the Desert, she portrayed writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist Gertrude Bell. Kidman played a district attorney, opposite Julia Roberts and Chiwetel Ejiofor, in the little-seen film Secret in Their Eyes (also 2015), a remake of the 2009 Argentine film of the same name, both based on the novel La pregunta de sus ojos by author Eduardo Sacheri. After more than 15 years, Kidman returned to the West End in the UK premiere of Photograph 51 at the Noël Coward Theatre. She starred as British scientist Rosalind Franklin, working for the discovery of the structure of DNA, in the production from 5 September to 21 November 2015, directed by Michael Grandage. Her return to the West End was hailed a success, especially after having won an acting award for her portrayal in the play.

Resurgence and television career (2016–present)

In 2016’s Lion, Kidman portrayed Sue, the adoptive mother of Saroo Brierley, an Indian boy who was separated from his birth family, a role she felt connected to as she herself is the mother of adopted children. She garnered rave reviews for her performance, as well as nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, her fourth nomination overall, and her eleventh Golden Globe Award nomination, among others. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times thought that “Kidman gives a powerful and moving performance as Saroo’s adoptive mother, who loves her son with every molecule of her being, but comes to understand his quest. It’s as good as anything she’s done in the last decade.” Budgeted at US$12 million, Lion earned over US$140 million globally. She also gave a voice-over performance for the English version of the animated film The Guardian Brothers.