Best Known As: Elegant Australian who won an Oscar for The Hours
Nicole Kidman won the Academy Award as best actress for her portrayal of writer Virginia Woolf in the film The Hours (2002). Kidman was born in Hawaii but grew up in Australia, where she began acting in her teens. She married screen heartthrob Tom Cruise after they met while filming the race-car soap opera Days of Thunder (1990), and they were one of Hollywood's most talked-about couples throughout the '90s. Her films during that era included Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995, based on the Pamela Smart case) and Stanley Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), in which she starred with Cruise. After a decade of marriage, Cruise and Kidman divorced, but her career soared as she continued to star in both mainstream Hollywood films and smaller, independent features. In 2001 she turned in an Oscar-nominated performance in Moulin Rouge and appeared in two other highly-acclaimed movies, Birthday Girl and The Others. Her other films include Far and Away (1992, with Cruise); Dogville (2003); Cold Mountain (2003, with Renee Zellweger); The Interpreter (2005, starring Sean Penn); Bewitched (2005, co-starring Will Ferrell); Fur (2006, about photographer Diane Arbus); and The Golden Compass (2007, based on the book by Philip Pullman).
Kidman married country singer Keith Urban on 25 June 2006... She had a daughter, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, on 7 July 2008... Kidman and Cruise adopted two children while they were married: Isabella (in 1993) and Connor (in 1995).
Career Highlights: Dead Calm, Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut
First Major Screen Credit: BMX Bandits (1983)
Biography
Once relegated to decorative parts for years and long acknowledged as the wife of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman spent the latter half of the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium earning much-deserved critical respect. Standing a willowy 5'11" and sporting one of Hollywood's most distinctive heads of frizzy red hair, the Australian actress first entered the American mindset with her role opposite Cruise in Days of Thunder (1990), but it wasn't until she starred as a homicidal weather girl in Gus Van Sant's 1995 To Die For that she achieved recognition as a thespian of considerable range and talent.
Though many assume that the heavily-accented Kidman hails from down under, she was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on June 20, 1967, to Australian parents. Her family, who lived on the island because of a research project that employed Kidman's biochemist father, then moved to Washington, D.C. for the next three years. After her father's project reached completion, Nicole and her family -- which also included her RN mother and a younger sister -- harkened back to Aussie country.
Raised in the upper-middle-class Sydney suburb of Longueville for the remainder of the 1970s and well into the eighties, Kidman grew up infused with a love of the arts, particularly dance and theatre. Trained in ballet from the age of three, she made her acting debut in a nativity play at six. By the age of ten, she was studying acting in drama school, and she subsequently trained at the St. Martin's Youth Theatre in Melbourne and at Sydney's Phillip Street Theatre.
An awkward, gawky teenager, teased relentlessly because of her height, Kidman took refuge in the theater, and landed her first professional role at the age of 14, when she starred in Bush Christmas (1983), a TV movie about a group of kids who band together with an Aborigine to find their stolen horse. Brian Trenchard-Smith's BMX Bandits (1983) -- an adventure film/teen movie -- followed , with Kidman as the lead character, Judy; it opened to solid reviews. Kidman then worked for the gifted John Duigan (The Winter of Our Dreams, Romero) twice, first as one of the two adolescent leads of the Duigan-directed "Room to Move" episode of the Australian TV series Winners (1985) and, more prestigiously, as the star of Duigan's acclaimed miniseries Vietnam (1987), produced by Kennedy-Miller In the latter, the actress won positive notices for her portrayal of an awkward 1960s schoolgirl who matures into an idealistic 24-year-old Vietnam war protester.
Kidman also secured Hollywood representation at about this time, which opened quite a few doors of opportunity. In 1988, Kidman got another major break when she was tapped to star in Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm (1989). A psychological thriller about a couple (Kidman and Sam Neill) who are terrorized by a young man they rescue from a sinking ship (Billy Zane), the film helped to establish the then-21-year-old Kidman as an actress of considerable mettle. That same year, her starring performance in the made-for-TV Bangkok Hilton (which cast her as a young woman incarcerated in a Thai prison on false drug smuggling charges) further bolstered her reputation.
By now a rising star in Australia, Kidman began to earn recognition across the Pacific. In 1989,Tom Cruise picked her for a starring role in her first American feature, Tony Scott's Days of Thunder (1990). The film, a testosterone-saturated drama about a racecar driver (Cruise), cast Kidman as the neurologist who falls in love with him. A sizable hit, it had the added advantage of introducing Kidman to Cruise, whom she married in December of 1990.
Following a role as Dustin Hoffman's moll in Robert Benton's Billy Bathgate (1991), and a supporting turn as a snotty boarding school senior in the masterful Flirting (1991), which teamed her with Duigan a third time, Kidman collaborated with Cruise on their second film together, Far and Away (1992). Despite their joint star quality, gorgeous cinematography, and adequate direction by Ron Howard, critics quite rightly panned the lackluster film.
Kidman's subsequent projects, My Life and Malice ( both 1993), were similarly disappointing, despite scattered favorable reviews. Batman Forever (1995), in which she played the hero's love interest, Dr. Chase Meridian, fared somewhat better, but did little in the way of establishing Kidman as a serious actress even as it raked in mile-high returns at the summer box office.
Kidman finally broke out of her window-dressing typecasting when Gus Van Sant enlisted her to portray the ruthless protagonist of To Die For (1995). Directed from a Buck Henry script, this uber-dark comedy casts Kidman as Suzanne Stone, a television broadcaster ready and eager to commit one homicide after another to propel herself to the top. Displaying a gift for impeccable comic timing, she earned Golden Globe and National Broadcast Critics Circle Awards for Best Actress. Further critical praise greeted Kidman's performance as Isabel Archer in Jane Campion's 1996 adaptation of Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady. Now regarded as one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood -- as well as one half of its most high-profile couple -- Kidman starred opposite George Clooney in the big-budget action extravaganza The Peacemaker (1997) and opposite Sandra Bullock in the frothy Practical Magic (1998). Both films weren't remotely as interesting or successful as Kidman's concurrent return to the stage in London's Donmar Warehouse production of The Blue Room. Cast as several characters, one of which required her to play a scene in the nude, Kidman inspired a sensation among both audiences and critics, the latter of whom were moved to write numerous lines of sweaty praise for the actress' full-bodied flirtation with nudity. The play enjoyed a sold-out run in both London and New York, and Kidman earned an Evening Standard Award and Olivier nomination for her performance.
In 1999, Kidman starred in one of her most controversial films to date, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle and cloaked in secrecy from the beginning of its production, the film also stars Cruise as Kidman's physician husband. During the spring and summer of 1999, the media unsurprisingly hyped the couple's onscreen pairing -- and the alleged envelope-pushing sexual content -- as the two major selling points. However, despite an added measure of intrigue from Kubrick's death only weeks after shooting wrapped, Eyes Wide Shut repeated the performance of prior Kubrick efforts by opening to a radically mixed reaction.
Meanwhile, as the new millennium arrived, problems began to erupt between Kidman and Tom Cruise; divorce followed soon after, and the tabloids swirled with talk of new relationships for the both of them. She concurrently plunged into a string of daring, eccentric film roles - edgier and chancer than anything she had done before --and seemed to relish greater and greater challenges as her career rolled on.
Kidman began this trend with a role in Jez Butterworth's Birthday Girl (2001) as a Russian mail order bride, and Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (2001), which cast her, in the lead, as a courtesan in a 19th century Paris hopped up with late 20th century pop songs. The picture - a carnivalesque whirligig of color, light, sound and kinesthesia -- dazzled some and alienated others, but once again, journalists flocked to Kidman's side.
Following this success (the picture gleaned a Best Picture nod but failed to win), Kidman gained even more positive notice for her turn as an icy mother after the key to a dark mystery in Alejandro Amenabar's spooky throwback, The Others. When the 59th Annual Golden Globe Awards finally arrived, Kidman received nominations for her memorable performances in both films. Though her emotionally fragile performance in The Others lost out to Sissy Spacek's performace in Todd Field's In the Bedroom (2001), Kidman's upbeat performance in the lively Moulin Rouge found the versatile actress taking home a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy in addition to the Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
Though it couldn't have been any further from her flamboyant turn in Moulin Rouge, Kidman's camouflaged role as Virginia Woolf in the following year's The Hours (2002) (she wears little makeup and a prosthetic nose), for which she delivered a mesmerizing and haunting performance, kept the Oscar and Golden Globe nominations steadily flowing in for the acclaimed actress. The fair-haired beauty finally snagged the Best Actress Oscar that had been so elusive the year before.
After the elation that followed the Oscar ceremony, Kidman continued to take on challenging work under the aegis of intensely cerebral directors. She played the lead, Grace - a woman on the run from gangsters who holes up in a 1930s western town -- in Lars von Trier's Dogville, although she declined to continue in Von Trier's planned trilogy of films about that character. She swung for the Oscar fences again in 2003 as the female lead in Cold Mountain, but it was co-star Renee Zellweger who won the statuette that year. Kidman did solid work for Jonathan Glazer in the Jean-Claude Carriere-penned Birth, as a woman revisited by the incarnation of her dead husband in a small child's body, but stumbled with a pair of empty-headed comedies, Frank Oz's The Stepford Wives and Nora Ephron's Bewitched (both 2005), that her skills could not save. She worked with Sean Penn in the political thriller The Interpreter in 2005. In 2006 Kidman's personal life took a turn for the better when she married country singer Keith Urban.
For the most part, Kidman continued to stretch herself with increasingly demanding and arty roles throughout 2006. In Steven Shainberg's Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, Kidman plays controversial housewife-cum-photographer Diane Arbus --a role that plunges the actress into a bizarre, fictionalized romance with the freakishly hirsute paramour Lionel Sweeney (Robert Downey, Jr.). In Happy Feet, fellow Aussie Dr. George Miller's live action Babe follow-up about a penguin who learns to tap dance to impress a crush, Kidman voices one of several talking Arctic animals.
Meanwhile, Kidman returned to popcorn pictures by playing Mrs. Coulter in Chris Weitz's massive, $150-million fantasy adventure The Golden Compass (2007), adapted from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series of books. She also signed on to headline the sci-fi thriller Invasion for Warner Brothers, a loose remake of the classic Invasion of hte Body Snatchers directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. Kidman plays a psychiatrist who, during a global epidemic that begins changing human behavior en masse - infers that an alien invasion is responsible. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC (born 20 June 1967) is an American-born Australian actress, fashion model, singer and humanitarian. In 2006, Kidman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, Australia's highest civilian honour.[1] In 2006, she was also the highest-paid actress in the motion picture industry.[2]
Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her father, Dr Antony David Kidman, is a biochemist, clinical psychologist and author, with an office in Lane Cove, Sydney, Australia.[4][5][6] Her mother, Janelle Ann (née Glenny), is a nursing instructor who edits her husband's books and was a member of the Women's Electoral Lobby. At the time of Kidman's birth, her father was a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health of the United States. The family returned to Australia when Kidman was four and her parents now live on Sydney's North Shore. Kidman has a younger sister, Antonia Kidman, a journalist. She has known actress Naomi Watts since they were in their teens and the two remain best friends today.
In 1989, Kidman starred in Dead Calm as Rae Ingram, the wife of naval officer John Ingram (Sam Neill), held captive on a Pacific yacht trip by the psychotic Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane). The thriller garnered strong reviews; Variety commented: "Throughout the film, Kidman is excellent. She gives the character of Rae real tenacity and energy."[7] Meanwhile, critic Roger Ebert noted the excellent chemistry between the leads, stating, "...Kidman and Zane do generate real, palpable hatred in their scenes together."[8] In 1990, she appeared opposite Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, and again in Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992). In 1995, Kidman featured in the ensemble cast of Batman Forever.
International success (1995–present)
Kidman's second film in 1995, To Die For, was a satirical comedy that earned her critical praise.[9] For her portrayal of the murderous newscaster Suzanne Stone Maretto, she won a Golden Globe Award and five other best actress awards. In 1998, she appeared in the film Practical Magic alongside Sandra Bullock, and starred in the stage play The Blue Room, which opened in London. In 1999 Kidman and Cruise portrayed a married couple in Eyes Wide Shut, the final film of Stanley Kubrick. The film opened to generally positive reviews but was subject to censorship controversies due to the explicit nature of its sex scenes.[10]
In 2002 Kidman received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 2001 musical film Moulin Rouge!, in which she played the courtesan Satine opposite Ewan McGregor. Consequently, Kidman received her second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The same year she also had a well-received starring role in the horror film The Others. While in Australia filming Moulin Rouge!, Kidman injured her ribs; as a result, Jodie Foster replaced her as leading actress in the film Panic Room. In that film, Kidman's voice appears on the phone as the mistress of the husband of the lead character.
The following year, Kidman won critical praise for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, in which the prosthetics applied to her made her almost unrecognisable. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role, along with a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and numerous critics awards. Kidman became the first Australian actress to win an Academy Award. During her Academy Award acceptance speech, Kidman made a teary statement about the importance of art, even during times of war: "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."[11]
Kidman's two movies in 2005 were The Interpreter and Bewitched. The Interpreter, directed by Sydney Pollack, received mixed reviews, while Bewitched, co-starring Will Ferrell and based on the 1960s TV sitcom of the same name, was generally panned by critics. Neither film fared well in the United States, their box office sales falling well short of the production costs, but both films fared well internationally.[12][13]
In conjunction with her success in 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 season in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2008. The three-minute commercial produced for Chanel No. 5 perfume made Kidman the record holder for the most money paid per minute to an actor after she reportedly earned US$12million for the 3 minute advert.[14] During this time, Kidman was also listed 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 a US$16 million to US$17 million per-film price tag.[15] She has since passed Roberts as the highest paid actress.
Kidman appeared in the Diane Arbus bio-pic Fur. She also lent her voice to the animated film Happy Feet, which quickly garnered critical and commercial success; the film grossed over US$384 million dollars worldwide. In 2007, she starred in the science fiction movie The Invasion directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel where it was reported that she received $26 million dollars for her performance; although it was a critical and commercial failure Kidman said that she has no control over the success of her films. She also played opposite Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black in Noah Baumbach's comedy-drama Margot at the Wedding. She also starred in the film adaptation of the first part of the planned His Dark Materials trilogy of films, playing the villainous Marisa Coulter. However, The Golden Compass''s failure to meet expectations at the North American box office has reduced the likelihood of a sequel.[16]
On 25 June 2007, Nintendo 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.[17]
In 2008, she starred Baz Luhrmann's Australian period film titled Australia, which is set in the remote Northern Territory during the Japanese attack on Darwin during World War II. Kidman played opposite Hugh Jackman as an English woman feeling overwhelmed by the continent. The film was a box office success worldwide.[18]
Kidman was originally set to star in The Reader, a post-war Germany drama, but due to her pregnancy she had to back out of the film.[19] Shortly after the news of Kidman's departure, it was announced that Kate Winslet would take over the role.[20] Winslet went on to win the Oscar for Best Actress for the role - at the ceremony, Kidman was one of the five previous winners who presented her with the award.[21]
On 10 November 2008, TV Guide reported that Kidman will star in the film adaptation of The Danish Girl alongside Charlize Theron. Kidman will play Elinar Wegener, the world's first post-op transsexual.[22]
Kidman has been married twice. She became romantically involved with actor Tom Cruise on the set of their 1990 movie, Days of Thunder. Kidman and Cruise were married on Christmas Eve 1990 in Telluride, Colorado. The couple adopted a daughter, Isabella Jane (born 1992), and a son, Connor Anthony (born 1995). They separated just after their 10th wedding anniversary. She was three months pregnant and had a miscarriage.[23] Cruise filed for divorce in February 2001. The marriage was dissolved in 2001, Cruise citing irreconcilable differences.[24] The reasons for dissolution have never been made public. In Marie Claire, Kidman said she had an ectopic pregnancy early in their marriage.[25] In the June 2006 Ladies' Home Journal, she said she still loved Cruise: "He was huge; still is. To me, he was just Tom, but to everybody else, he is huge. But he was lovely to me. And I loved him. I still love him." In addition, she has expressed shock about their divorce.[26]
Nicole Kidman in August 2006
The 2003 film Cold Mountain brought rumours that an affair between Kidman and co-star Jude Law was responsible for the break-up of his marriage. Both denied the allegations, and Kidman won an undisclosed sum from the British tabloids that published the story.[27] She gave the money to a Romanian orphanage in the town where the movie was filmed.[28]Robbie Williams confirmed they had a short romance on her yacht in summer 2004. Shortly after her Oscar, there were rumours of a relationship between her and Adrien Brody.[29] She met musician Lenny Kravitz in 2003 and dated him into 2004.[30]
Kidman met her second husband, country singer Keith Urban at G'Day LA, an event honouring Australians in January 2005. They married on 25 June 2006, at Cardinal Cerretti Memorial Chapel in the grounds of St Patrick's Estate, Manly in Sydney. They maintain homes in Sydney, Sutton Forest, Los Angeles and Nashville, Tennessee. In March 2008, they bought mansions in Los Angeles[31] and Nashville[32] within days.
After speculation by the press, it was confirmed on 8 January 2008 that Kidman was three months pregnant. The couple had their first child, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, on 7 July 2008, in Nashville, Tennessee.[33] Kidman's father said the daughter's middle name was after Urban's late grandmother, Rose.[34]
Kidman mentioned in an interview with Ellen Degeneres in 2005 that she is banned from doing one of her favourite hobbies - sky diving - whilst shooting a movie.[35][36] In January 2005, Kidman won interim restraining orders against two Sydney paparazzi who were stalking her.[37]
In the beginning of 2009, Kidman appeared in a series of special edition postage stamps featuring some of Australia's great actors. She, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, and Cate Blanchett each appear twice in the series: once as themselves and once as their Academy Award-winning character.[38]
Religious and political views
Kidman is a practising Roman Catholic.[39] She attended Mary Mackillop Chapel in North Sydney. During her marriage to Cruise, she had been an occasional practitioner of Scientology.[40]
Kidman has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF Australia since 1994. She has raised money for and drawn attention to the disadvantaged children around the world. In 2004, she was honored as a "Citizen of the World" by the United Nations.
Kidman joined the 'Little Tee Campaign' for breast cancer care to design T-shirts or vests to raise money for breast cancer.[44] Kidman's mother had breast cancer in 1984.[45]
Filmography
Kidman's movies gross total is more than US$2 billion, with 17 movies making more than $100 million.[46]
In 2006, Kidman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), Australia's highest civilian honour, for "service to the performing arts as an acclaimed motion picture performer, to health care through contributions to improve medical treatment for women and children and advocacy for cancer research, to youth as a principal supporter of young performing artists, and to humanitarian causes in Australia and internationally."[47] However, due to film commitments and her wedding to Urban, it was 13 April 2007 that she was presented with the honour.[48], presented by Governor-General of Australia, Major General Michael Jeffery in a ceremony at Government House, Canberra.[49]
