In the 1990s, Nicole Kidman
became the new Hollywood icon.
With her beauty, glamour
and adaptability,
she seemed to be destined
for blockbusters
like her husband, Tom cruise.
You are selfish.
You're crazy and you're scared.
But she soon opted
for arthouse films,
working with the most prestigious
independent filmmakers
and experimenting with the roles
of impenetrable, haunted,
strong-willed and combative women.
From then on,
without entirely turning her back
on mainstream movies,
Nicole Kidman built a career in which
she gives her vision of women.
# One day, I'll fly away... #
In 2002, a completely
metamorphosed Nicole Kidman
became Virginia Woolf in The Hours,
and won the Best Actress Oscar
for her performance.
And the Oscar goes to Nicole Kidman.
But behind the glory,
Nicole Kidman was going through
one of the most painful periods
of her life.
Her interpretation of Virginia Woolf
embodied and reflected the depression
she was suffering from herself.
It was all extraordinary,
and I was the loneliest
I'd ever been.
And that was a very strange thing
to have happen,
and it was a fantastic thing
to have happen
because I was jolted out of
this need or desire to say,
"Well, this is going to heal me."
And it didn't.
What happened
in Nicole Kidman's life,
until then, a near-perfect
professional and personal journey?
In 1983, a new face
lit up Australian screens.
Nicole Kidman had just received
her first part in a teen action movie
with lots of energy and stunts.
How did you first get
into this film?
Um, well, I went for an audition,
and then I went for
a screen test and things.
First, they told me
I was too tall for the part,
because the other guys
are smaller than me,
or one of them is.
Um, but then they got back to me
a week later and said that I had it.
So that was all.
Now tell me, do you do any
of these stunt riding in this film?
No. No, no, I've got a stunt double.
Right.
Who's a boy.
Who's a boy?
Yeah.
That's a bit of a difference.
He wears a wig.
Following the success of BMX Bandits,
the young actress appeared
in numerous Australian TV movies
whose quality was moderate,
to say the least,
and didn't always do her justice.
But what about the ad?
What about it?
You said I could do
a screen test for you.
That was before
you took your clothes off.
It's not even worth
putting film in the camera.
You creep.
You promised me!
Nevertheless, Nicole Kidman
honed her acting skills
and started giving substance
to her childhood dreams.
Her ambition to perform roles
came from her reading,
the first passion of a girl raised
in a progressive and cultured family,
as she would often state.
My mother would read to me,
you know, since I was tiny.
She was obsessed with educating you.
She would feed our imaginations
constantly, my sister and I.
I would spend a lot of time
alone in my room reading.
That was sort of the door
to me saying,
"Oh, I actually can have that life.
"If I read this book
and it lasts long enough,
"I can exist
as Natasha in w*r and Peace
"for a period of my time
on this earth."
And that was what was
so appealing, I think,
because I was a gawky teenager,
and it was my way of
morphing into being somebody else.
Her parents
are very intelligent,
and academics, I understand.
They would not censor themselves if
they didn't like something she did.
So I think she always had
that little girl thing of like,
"Daddy, do you like it?" You know?
And I could see that in her,
you know, the little girl who...
..I wouldn't say
was never good enough,
but a little girl who always
was, perhaps, scrutinised.
And there's a kind of...
..presentational thing,
but also maybe a little
self-conscious in public
of like, "Oh, I know people
are watching and judging,
"and I'm trying not to care."
I started acting at 14,
so I had a number of years
where I built relationships
with Australian directors
and did little things,
and all I wanted to do
was explore and work.
Why?
I don't know what happened then.
I went to drama school,
played around, did plays.
I had a lot of time
to, um, cultivate.
Always remember,
you're a working actress.
Mm.
Not a star.
If you become a star, fine.
But you're always a working actress.
At the age of 22,
Nicole Kidman already had
a noteworthy career in Australia,
but she had started feeling limited
in the parts she was offered.
It was then that
director Phillip Noyce
gave her the leading role in
a movie with an international cast.
In this tense psychological thriller,
she plays the hostage of a psychopath
who's taken possession of her yacht,
having disposed of her husband.
A movie with little dialogue,
Dead Calm gave her the chance
to play with silences,
and especially with her eyes,
introducing a unique face
and long-legged figure
to the film world.
After a violent fight in which her
character gets rid of her aggressor,
she's soon back at the helm
in the middle of a storm.
Dead Calm was
an international success,
especially at the US box office.
Nicole Kidman had become known as
an actress who mastered
interpretation.
With this movie, she also sketched
the first lines of a world
she would explore
throughout her career,
with all its complexity -
that of women having to fight
for their freedom.
I'd imagine Nicole,
as someone who was determined
to make it in acting,
was keen to go to Hollywood,
and Dead Calm was
a wonderful opportunity for her.
She'd done very well in Australia,
but, relatively,
big fish, small pond.
And here was an opportunity
to break into Hollywood.
And it certainly put her on the map.
And it was also a chance for her to
show her range in what she did.
It wasn't just a straightforward
kind of girlfriend role
or wife role.
This was a pretty meaty role,
and it gave her a chance
to show her acting chops.
She talks about the tall poppy
syndrome of Australia,
where if one flower gets
a little taller than the rest,
the other flowers are like,
"Who do you think you are?"
And she expressed
that was one of the reasons
she found relief in America,
because you don't
have that in America.
Getting ahead is
the American ethic, right?
Getting ahead of everyone else.
In her case, it wasn't
so much about getting ahead,
but she was full of ambition
to make great work,
to work with great people.
Across the Pacific, Tom Cruise
was the new darling of Hollywood.
Tony Scott's Top g*n
had made him a box office star,
imposing his form
of hedonistic virility.
For his next film, Days Of Thunder -
again by Tony Scott -
Cruise wanted an actress
capable of standing up to him.
I remember seeing Tom cruise drive
up in a Porsche, I think it was,
and he got out of the car
and walked,
and my jaw dropped.
And then I had to go in and kind
of audition in front of Tony Scott.
And I was like, "Oh, no way.
I'm not going to get this."
And they called THAT afternoon,
and I had the job.
That was, like, huge, and, you know,
obviously changed my life.
So grateful for the film,
for everything that came with it.
It was a big, important part
of my life.
Here is this virtually unknown
Australian actress
who's like a firecracker.
You could sense that
there was something
between her and Tom Cruise,
a real chemistry.
And that was sort of
playing out on set.
How could you ignore me like that?
I wasn't ignoring you.
I wasn't ignoring you.
I gave you a very thorough physical.
Shortly after,
he married Nicole Kidman,
and it helped launch her career,
that thrust her into the spotlight.
But she was also kind of like,
uh, you know, an extension
of one of the biggest
American movie stars there was.
She was Tom Cruise's new girl.
Tom Cruise arrived as favourite
to win the Oscar for Best Actor.
At their first official appearance
as a couple at the Oscars,
Nicole Kidman understood,
before the delirious crowd,
that she risked being swallowed up
in the superstar's shadow.
Nicole Kidman!
To free herself
of this invasive association.
She felt the need to play on it,
so she could stand alone
before audiences as an individual.
It's a thrill to be here on
Saturday Night Live!
And, first things first,
I just want to say
yes, I am married to Tom cruise.
He's my husband.
But this is my show tonight,
and we're going to have
a lot of fun.
And... Oh, yeah, you.
Yeah, yeah. Hi. Hi.
Is it is it true that Tom Cruise
is going to be here tonight.
When Tom Cruise gets here,
I was wondering if, uh,
if he could sign my Top g*n jacket.
Kidman was getting tired of playing
the foil to male lead characters.
Her American dream
was going round in circles,
so she was desperate to break with
her squeaky-clean image
of Hollywood beauty,
and to assert herself
in independent movies
where she would have the lead role.
Opportunities
were few and far between,
but she heard that
independent filmmaker Gus Van Sant
was having trouble
filling the leading role
in the movie he was about to make -
To Die For.
We were looking for
the lead actress,
and we had one idea.
Um, the actresses were
a little bit afraid of the part
because she was kind of
a divisive, um...
..maybe somewhat evil character.
So the actresses in L.A.
tended to be, um...
..you know, they wanted to look
positive and good and attractive,
and she looked
positive and attractive,
but maybe not good.
Nicole pre-emptively called
while we were waiting
for this one actress,
and said, you know,
I know that I'm not
your first choice,
but I was destined to
play this role.
And Patricia Arquette
seemed more like
she might actually
try and k*ll her husband.
But I think, um,
getting to know Nicole,
I realised now that maybe
she would have k*lled her husband.
In To Die For, Nicole Kidman
plays Suzanne Stone,
a small-town woman
obsessed with forging a successful
career as a TV presenter.
To get rid of her husband
who wants to start a family
and keep her as a housewife,
she manipulates a group of lost
teenagers low on love and dreams.
Two.
One.
Hi, everybody.
Nicole was still just kind of
starting off in the US, so...
And she was also from Australia,
where I think, in Australia,
there's very often is
a very dark aspect to the stories.
In the world of Hollywood,
where the actresses are,
you know, have huge careers
and they, you know, have images,
they were very afraid of, you know,
of how the film would turn out.
The character's diabolic nature
didn't scare Kidman.
On the contrary, she saw it
as an opportunity
to play a modern-day Madame Bovary,
with a subtle performance,
the success of which would rely on
the absence of self derision,
without which the horror
of the character and her crime
would have lost all credibility.
I believe that
in our fast-moving computer age,
it is the medium of television that
joins together the global community.
And it is the television journalist
who serves as messenger,
bringing the world into our homes
and our homes, into the world.
It has always been my dream
to become such a messenger.
I look to you gentlemen now
to make that dream...
..a reality.
You know, she's aware of
what she's playing.
She was very hard working.
She prepared for maybe six months,
or however long it was,
with a coach.
She was just very good
from the start.
She was like a co-director.
She knew everything
about the script.
She could help with the kids,
and had ideas about the scenes.
She knew exactly how to play it.
I think we expected that she would
probably try really hard,
because she was married to Tom
and Tom was a very big star,
and then she would want to
make this her own piece.
We assumed, which we were right.
They told me to come to Cannes,
they just loved To Die For.
I remember getting a call saying,
"No, no, they really
love the movie."
I'm like, "Really?
I don't know if I believe you."
And that basically
changed my career.
From that point on, I suddenly was
taken seriously internationally.
I'd been taken seriously
in Australia,
but not internationally.
Come on, you guys.
Nicole Kidman had moved up a league,
and was now the object
of special attention,
just like Jane Campion,
the director of her next film,
The Portrait Of A Lady.
The film was also an opportunity
for the two women to meet again
after a failed project
15 years earlier.
And, despite an exhausting sh**t,
working together would seal
a strong friendship between the two,
which had been
left on the back burner.
She was older than me and she was
just out of film school,
and she came to the drama school
that I was at,
which was a kids' drama school,
and saw me on stage and cast me.
And she wanted me to
wear a shower cap and kiss a girl.
And I was like,
"I'm not going to do it,"
'cause I had a vision of myself,
you know, long, flowing hair,
doing Gone With The Wind.
And then, um, Portrait Of A Lady
came around and she cast me in it.
Tortured, intellectual and refined,
the character of Isabel Archer
was an emotional challenge
for the actress,
who drew on her own sufferings
to interpret a woman
seriously at odds with
19th-century upper-class society.
Nicole Kidman was physically
and emotionally drained
at the end of the experience,
in which she had seen
fragments of herself.
Isabel is in
an emotionally a*usive relationship,
and so the things that, as an actor,
that you have to use to create that,
it's very intense
and it's very upsetting.
There's deep shame, in a way,
and humiliation
because you're being put through
these things
that are very hard to
allow to happen to yourself.
I always thought
you were fond of my daughter.
I've never been more so than now.
Your affection
has immense limitations.
However, that, perhaps, is natural.
Is that all you wish to say to me?
Are you satisfied now?
Am I sufficiently disappointed?
I don't think, on the whole,
you're disappointed.
You've had another opportunity
to try to stupefy me.
After Jane Campion,
it was the turn of Stanley Kubrick,
15 years since his last film,
to choose, Nicole Kidman,
along with husband Tom Cruise
for Eyes Wide Shut.
For the two Hollywood stars,
this collaboration was a chance to
go down in film history
while reinforcing the iconic nature
of their marriage.
Something really interesting
happened with Eyes Wide Shut.
This was a movie where,
in order to work with one of
the great master directors,
Stanley Kubrick,
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman
basically agreed to
give as much of themselves
and their time and their commitment
to making that film.
And so they went on location.
They spent, you know, months,
letting us see these characters
as versions of themselves,
as, like, you know, playing off of
the little, tiny cracks
in their own relationship
and letting that be part of it.
Honey, you seen my wallet?
Uh...
Isn't it on the bedside table?
To establish this confusion
between fiction and reality,
Stanley Kubrick encouraged them
to let their private life out
on the set
while he captured them
in daily-life scenes.
How do I look?
Perfect.
Is my hair OK?
It's great.
You're not even looking at it.
It's beautiful.
You're always beautiful.
Did you give Roz the phone
and pager numbers?
Yeah, I put it on the fridge.
Let's go, huh?
OK.
Alright.
I'm ready.
Women don't...
They basically
just don't think like that.
Millions of years of evolution.
Right?
Right?!
Men have to stick it
in every place they can.
But for women, women, it is
just about security and commitment,
and whatever the f*ck else.
A little oversimplified, Alice,
but, yes, something like that.
If you men only knew.
There's reality and there's pretend,
and those lines get crossed.
And it happens when
you're working with a director
that allows that to happen.
And it's a very exciting thing
to happen.
It's a very dangerous thing
to happen.
And I think that's what happened.
I mean, over the course of
the year and a half,
I just, you know, became that woman.
Stanley Kubrick died
four months before
the American premiere
of Eyes Wide Shut.
No pictures of the sh**t
were published,
creating a level of expectation
that none of Kubrick's films
had ever known.
The two actors had to take on
the entire promotion
of the movie alone.
During interviews, Nicole Kidman
couldn't mask her grief
when talking about the filmmaker
who had taught her
to reappraise her craft.
I think it changed the way I view
films, the way I view filmmaking.
It gave me a belief in the...
..purity of filmmaking,
in the art form of making a film.
And that, however long it takes,
whatever you have to go through,
you're making a film,
and it's extraordinary
and wonderful.
Both of them reacted differently
post-Kubrick.
While Tom cruise continued in movies,
Nicole Kidman returned to the stage
in New York in The Blue Room,
David Hare's take on La Ronde
by Arthur Schnitzler,
the man whose novella
inspired Eyes Wide Shut.
By staying close to this world,
she also felt the need to reconnect
with the passions of her teen years.
You're a model.
You have to look awful.
It's the job.
Don't believe you've
got that quite right.
It was one of those things
that blossomed very, very quickly.
And I'm so glad it did,
'cause I love doing theatre.
And I remember it as being
one of those times
when you're just walking on air.
And now kiss me, at least.
And we got wonderful reviews,
and it was just one of those things
where you're doing
eight shows a week going,
"Oh, this is why I act."
One night, the actress found
a new, extraordinary project
deposited in her dressing room,
which would occupy her mind and body
for long months to come,
and ward off
the beginnings of melancholy -
Moulin Rouge!
by fellow Australian Baz Luhrmann.
It's her. The sparkling diamond!
# A kiss on the hand
# May be quite continental
# But diamonds
are a girl's best friend
# A kiss may be grand
# But it won't pay the rental
on your humble flat
# Or help to feed your
Pussycat... #
Moulin Rouge!
was a game-changing role.
Her needing to sing, her needing to,
you know, kind of like
be a mythical, angelic,
tragic figure
as she'd never played before,
and few actresses,
I think could handle.
# Friend! #
I believe you are expecting me.
Yes, yes.
Moulin Rouge! was a challenge
that called for several months
of rehearsals
and total investment
during the sh**t.
The glitz and glamour of this musical
masks the tragic tale
of a cabaret actress, Satine,
who struggles to love
the man she wants,
and not her wealthy protector.
I liked the conflict that she has,
in terms of she's this woman
that's trapped in this world.
She knows how she has to survive,
and she protects herself.
Um, she sort of
doesn't allow people in.
You know, she's a courtesan.
She's a high-class prost*tute.
And the one thing
she's not allowed to do
is she's not allowed to
fall in love.
# When will I begin?
# To live again... #
For Nicole Kidman, the finale,
and Satine's declaration of love
was a metaphor for her own work
as an actress.
The stage had become a place
where she could reveal
her personal demons and desires.
# ..to my heart
# Can you hear it sing?
# Come back to me
# And forgive everything... #
I quite like
that it took that long
for Nicole Kidman to actually do
a deeply romantic role.
And I remember seeing her
in interviews at the time
saying that the message
of the film is
it's better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all.
Which seems rather poignant,
when you think about what was going
on in her own life at the time.
Back now, and it's 7:18.
In Hollywood, a town where divorce
is as common as plastic surgery,
a break-up of a power couple
like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman
still has plenty of tongues wagging.
The two announced their separation
on Monday
after ten years of marriage.
To me, it's it signifies that
there is something dramatic
in this relationship
that we don't know about yet.
Both Kidman and Cruise
suddenly found themselves
caught up in a media storm,
unleashing
the curiosity of reporters.
Suddenly I'm chased by paparazzi.
I've had, you know, a whole
number of things happening.
I know you don't
want to talk about it.
Can you tell us this?
Was it a fairy tale?
Was it a fairy tale?
And do you have a relationship
where you talk -
it's a parenting relationship -
and talk professionally
about each other's...?
Why don't we... Listen.
Here's the here's the thing, Peter.
You're stepping over a line now.
You're stepping over a line.
You know you are.
I suppose there are questions...
Peter.
People want to know.
Peter.
YOU want to know.
Take responsibility
for what you want to know.
Don't say what other people.
This is a conversation that I'm
having with you right now.
OK, so I'm just telling
you right now, OK?
Just...put your manners back in.
Well, I know. It's odd.
It's just an odd thing, you know?
Well, I can wear heels now.
Avoiding having to explain,
she put on a brave face
on TV talk shows.
But behind this imposed
media exercise,
depression was lurking.
Man.
Now we move on.
Yeah.
That's going to cost you.
She has to define herself
as something other than his ex-wife.
And I don't think we even think
of her as his ex-wife anymore.
But there was a moment where
there was that risk
where she would be cast away,
and the attention would continue
on Tom Cruise, this megastar,
and, you know, would she fade away?
Nicole Kidman would symbolically
fade away beneath the makeup
for her embodiment of Virginia Woolf,
a woman who took refuge in her
interior world to escape her demons.
Under Stephen Daldry's direction,
she began a new cycle of work that
would prove to be ultra-intense.
Dearest...
I feel certain that
I am going mad again.
I feel we can't go through another
of these terrible times,
and I...
..shan't recover this time.
I begin to hear voices...
..and can't concentrate.
So I'm doing what seems
to be the best thing to do.
I was able to understand her
on a very deep level.
There was something about
being trapped.
There was something about not
actually desiring...
You know, grappling
with what's my future.
Do I want a future?
Do I need a future?
What is life, anyway? Nihilism.
Virginia gave me a gift
at this time in my life,
by exploring just what she says
about life, what she feels,
her ability to sort of exist
within her struggles,
and then let that feed into her art.
Kidman, the actress,
gave herself so fully to the role
that it became cathartic,
allowing her to understand herself
and overcome her suffering
to be born again.
With The Hours,
she also painted a picture
of women trapped
in a male-dominated world
and barely aware of
their own reality.
You call me ungrateful?
My life has been stolen from me.
I'm living in a town I have no
wish to live in.
I'm living...
..a life I have no wish to live.
How did this happen?
That role, I think, really showed us
that she was capable of transforming
in the way that someone like
Meryl Streep is associated with.
But an Oscar nomination
changes everything.
An Oscar WIN cements it.
She was one of
the, probably, three actresses
who would see any role first
and would have first choice.
So you can assume,
from The Hours on,
that any movie that
Nicole Kidman made,
SHE wanted to make.
All of this is, you know, to me,
one of the early summits
of Nicole Kidman's career,
after which I think you see
a totally different kind of choice
that she's making.
At the height of her fame,
Nicole Kidman did
a complete about-turn
by joining director
Lars von Trier on Dogville,
a study of the behaviour of villagers
who provide a haven for a woman
on the run from mobsters.
Everyone?
And Chuck.
Chuck?
Everyone.
I think they like you here.
With this avant garde movie,
Kidman sought to overcome personal
problems in extreme conditions.
I was in pain,
and I was like, I want to go off to
this place in Sweden, Trollhattan,
and work with this director.
And, and I was very, very interested
in the style, which was Brechtian.
It was really difficult.
The role was really difficult.
Lars is unusual.
And it was an odd, odd, odd
existence.
And then Bill,
who had lately improved
his engineering skills
to an astonishing degree,
had, by way of his first design,
implemented a kind of
escape prevention mechanism.
Beautiful, it might not have been.
But effective, he dared say it was.
In this fable-like story,
the villagers' kindliness
soon veers towards enslavement,
which allowed Kidman to add
to her panoply of characters
that of a woman
subjected to abuse and humiliation.
This social satire resonated
with feminist causes,
but also with Kidman's own otherness,
that of an actress who disregards
the rules of Hollywood
to breathe life
into her artistic ambitions.
In American movies,
it's often the case
where, like, a movie
WILL NOT get made
if you don't have
a bankable star attached to it.
And those stars
are almost always men.
The list of women who do that
is almost non-existent.
Nicole Kidman is an exception
among American actors,
where you have a woman
who can get a movie made,
That it is recognised that,
you know,
she is a star
who not only does great work
but will attract an audience.
That's really what that's about.
She tells me
she goes on instinct.
There's something, like,
quest-like about it.
There's something heroic about it.
All of her characters,
even if they're small people,
there's a strange kind of
lonely warrior thing about them,
that she goes for those characters
that are perhaps...
..alone, but right.
I can see it in Eyes Wide Shut.
I can see it in Dead Calm.
I can see it in Birth.
The characters are at w*r
with the world.
In Jonathan Glazer's Birth,
Nicole Kidman plays
the gloomy part of a widow
having trouble coming to terms with
her husband's untimely death,
as she tries to rebuild her life.
To me, Birth is a really interesting
and kind of overlooked movie,
or underrated movie
from Nicole Kidman's career.
She's playing someone
who falls in love with a child
who she believes to be
a reincarnation of her.
you know, her true love.
What are you doing?
I'm looking at my wife.
The way that that reads,
in a country like America,
which is very puritanical
and very conservative about,
you know, paedophilia
and the sort of
superficial layers of that,
this is something that, you know,
could take down a career,
it could destroy the movie
and tarnish everyone involved.
To me, this is an incredible risk
that she took
and, you know,
one of many in her career.
Kidman deepened her
own existential questions,
gradually becoming aware
of her need to exist
in order to confront
the roles of impenetrable women
on the verge of breakdown.
And her need to find filmmakers
who would let her do this.
The directors that you work with
are the ones that, um,
they sort of draw you out,
they coax you out.
They see things that you let them
access, I suppose.
It gives me... It satiates me
in such a enormous way,
being an actor.
I think I'd probably be pretty crazy
if I didn't have it.
In 2006, Nicole Kidman's private life
took a turn for the better
when she married
country music star Keith Urban,
then gave birth to
their two daughters.
Give her a kiss!
Having found stability,
Kidman wanted more control
over her career
and founded
her own production company,
Blossom Films.
Her first film would be Rabbit Hole
by John Cameron Mitchell,
an independent filmmaker
unused to big productions,
whom she took under her wing.
In this story of a woman
devastated by the death of her son,
she attempts to heal
by getting to know the young man
who caused the accident.
I was 40. I was pregnant.
I was in a position where my career
was on a sort of a downward trend.
And I went, so how do I somehow
take some sort of control
of where I'm going now,
particularly as a woman?
So that was sort of the reason
I became a producer.
Rabbit hole was beginning
of the next chapter
of her acting life.
You know, there was a few missteps,
maybe in the material,
not in her performance,
but in the material
that she was doing.
I do believe, for Rabbit Hole,
Nicole was in a trance-like state
throughout the sh**ting,
and I believe that had to do with
the subject matter.
God had to take her.
He needed another angel.
He needed another angel.
Why didn't he just make one?
Another angel.
I mean, he's God, after all.
Why didn't he just
make another angel?
Hmm?
I'd like to go.
She is playing this woman
who's lost a child,
and she's just had a child.
She had a baby.
And I was like, how the hell
could someone be so courageous
as to enter the story about
a mother who loses a young child
to an accident?
She may have said, at one point,
if I can imagine the worst thing,
then I could maybe know
that I could...
..maybe deal with it.
Since Rabbit Hole, she...
..is very much a part of creating
her...making her projects happen.
And it's because she wants
those stories to be told,
but it's also so she can experience
these wonderful roles.
And Nicole, I believe,
through these stories...
..is promulgating a worldview,
you know, is seeking
a certain amount of justice,
not in a didactic way,
but in an empathetic way.
But mostly, it's about pushing...
..society a little bit
to think about people who are
in prisons in one way or another,
especially women.
Despite her natural modesty,
Nicole Kidman has never
baulked at getting naked
when the script requires it.
She's also committed to exploring
female desires in every dimension,
including the most extreme.
Yeah.
Now open up your mouth.
Picture what you wrote me
in your letters.
Umm...
Directors bring out different things
in their actors,
and this is what Lee
brought out in me.
Don't do what you did the last time.
Do what you did the time before.
That's my job. It's my job to
give over to something,
not to censor it,
not to put my own judgements,
in terms of how I feel, as Nicole,
playing the character.
That's... I'm there to
portray a truth.
I think there is a feminist
dimension to Nicole Kidman's work,
especially if you look at
Big Little Lies and The Undoing
and what those shows say
about domestic violence.
And, you know, these are issues
that concern women in our society
and that she's bringing to light.
She understands periodically that
a larger audience can get
some of her ideas out more.
So television is an example.
You know, she produced
Big Little Lies,
and her character,
who was an abused woman,
she played brilliantly.
And that was the most interesting
part of the series, for me,
is watching her scenes.
What's the big deal?
The big deal is that you lied to me.
You said it'd be
one meeting yesterday,
and then it'd be over with...
I never said that.
I said I thought
it would go away quickly,
and I still believe that it will.
I don't want you doing that.
Well, it's not your f*cking call.
Agh!
Mom?
OK.
Let's go, sweetie.
Hey, champ.
Hi, Dad.
Have a great day.
We're seeing a moment right
now where Hollywood and the world
are sort of re-evaluating
the gender relationships,
the dynamics, the equality.
And Nicole Kidman, I feel like
was fighting that fight
before it was fashionable,
before the industry was being
called out on the inequality
and being kind of obliged
and forced to change.
She, you know, is someone who
had incredible strength
and incredible insight
into how to kind of manoeuvre
herself and her career choices
in an industry that wasn't looking
to put women on an equal footing.
I've worked with a lot of men,
as directors,
who have given me
extraordinary roles.
I've obviously worked with
female directors too,
and I love to work
with female directors.
And I think the problem is
it's starting at the ground level,
where the females are not given
the chance to build their careers
so that they can become
the great directors.
And that's what we need to change.
During the 2010s,
Nicole Kidman became
the Goodwill Ambassador
for the UN Development Fund for Women
and demanded more female involvement
in the production of films.
And in Jay Roach's Bombshell,
she attacks male violence
in the TV industry
by denouncing sexual harassment
by the former CEO of Fox TV,
Roger Ailes.
Roger. Hi, there.
This is a treat.
The f*ck are you doing?
A segment on
how we oversexualize women.
Oh, bullshit.
Listen, mouth shut, ears open.
Nobody wants to watch
a middle-aged woman
sweat her way through menopause.
Not on national f*cking television!
Thank you for the advice.
In 2021, Nicole Kidman
brought back to life Lucille Ball,
the star of the 1950s sitcom
I Love Lucy.
Always present
during the script writing,
Lucille had created an intelligent,
judicious housewife...
Why not?
..almost independent of her husband.
Why doesn't Lucy hear him?
He'll do that thing where
you cover someone's eyes
and say, "Guess who?"
I understand it's the setup.
I understand why we need Lucy
to not hear him.
I just don't understand
why, in an apartment this size,
Lucy doesn't hear,
or for that matter,
see the front door open
when she's standing 12 feet from it.
We'll work on that.
Thanks.
This tribute allowed Nicole Kidman
to play a woman of 40
when she was almost 55.
Accustomed to playing women
of differing ages,
her acting stretches
the boundaries of age
in a Hollywood which
hates to see its icons get old -
proof of insidious sexism.
Despite her openly feminist stance,
the actress hasn't always
been able to escape this tyranny.
I do feel like Nicole
has been slightly, in a way,
imprisoned by the system
and the expectations
of how women are supposed to look.
And I feel like she,
and many actresses of her generation
have been expected to
look and act a certain way,
despite them being staunch feminists
and amazing actresses.
And I think that's really sad.
You got the steps.
You got the notes.
But where's the sass, baby?
Kidman grabs hold of every role,
treating it as a challenge.
She has an insatiable passion,
which she showed in her very first
instance in front of a camera
and which pushes her
even further today.
# You'll find that sass
will soon make fear
# Become your b*tch... #
That boldness,
and the courage that you have,
and the bravery you have
when you're first starting
is the thing that,
if you can keep it,
gives you the most extraordinary
opportunities and career.
It's so easy to lose it
because you get safe
and scared and lazy.
But if I can stay in that place
of bravery and hunger,
then who knows
where I'm going to go?
And that's exciting to me.
I don't want to know.
Like the intense mental disorder
experienced by her heroine in Birth,
Nicole Kidman, has taken on
the torments of her characters
to understand herself
and overcome
her own suffering and fears.
She is also drawn
the portrait of a lady
who fights domestic
and social entrapment,
the portrait of women
who find freedom
and reconcile with themselves,
and even with others.
After a career spanning 40 years,
Nicole Kidman continues her quest
for insight into
her tormented self-questioning.
And despite the pressures
of the Hollywood system,
she has kept her eyes wide open.
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Nicole Kidman: Eyes Wide Open (2023)
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