Nicole Kidman

Nicole Mary Kidman AC (born 20 June 1967) is an American and Australian actress and producer. Known for her work across various film and television productions from several genres, she has continuously remained one of the world's highest-paid actresses. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and six Golden Globe Awards.

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 achieved international success with the action film Days of Thunder. She received greater recognition with lead roles in Far and Away (1992), Batman Forever (1995), To Die For (1995) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). In 2003, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of writer Virginia Woolf in the drama film The Hours (2002). She received additional Academy Award nominations for her roles in the musical Moulin Rouge! (2001) and the dramas Rabbit Hole (2010), Lion (2016) and Being the Ricardos (2021).

Kidman's television roles include Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012), Big Little Lies (2017–2019), Top of the Lake: China Girl (2017), The Undoing (2020) and Nine Perfect Strangers (2021). For Big Little Lies, she received two Primetime Emmy Awards, one for Outstanding Lead Actress and the other for Outstanding Limited Series as an executive producer.

Kidman has served as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF since 1994 and for UNIFEM since 2006. In 2006, she was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia. She was married to actor Tom Cruise from 1990 to 2001 and has been married to country music singer Keith Urban since 2006. In 2010, she founded the production company Blossom Films. In 2004 and 2018, Time magazine included her on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2020, The New York Times named her one of the greatest actors of the 21st century.

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 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. She also has a younger sister, Antonia Kidman, who is a journalist and TV presenter. Having been born in the American state of Hawaii to Australian parents, Kidman holds dual citizenship of Australia and the United States. She has English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. Being born in Hawaii, she was given the Hawaiian name "Hōkūlani" (/ˌhoʊkuːˈlɑːni/), 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 Vietnam War, her parents participated in anti-war protests while living in Washington, D.C, having moved there shortly after Kidman's birth. Her family eventually returned to Australia three years later. She grew up in Sydney where she attended Lane Cove Public School and North Sydney Girls' High School. She was enrolled in ballet at the age of three and showed her natural talent for acting during her primary and high school years.

Kidman 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. She 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." During her teenage years, she attended the Phillip Street Theatre, alongside fellow actress Naomi Watts, and the Australian Theatre for Young People, where she took up drama and mime as she found acting to be a refuge. Owing to her fair skin and naturally red hair, the sun drove her to rehearse in the halls of the theatre. A regular at the Phillip Street Theatre, she was encouraged to pursue acting full-time, which she did by dropping out of high school.

Early work and breakthrough (1983-1994)
In 1983, 16-year-old Kidman made her film debut in a remake of the Australian holiday classic Bush Christmas. By the end of that year, 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 therapy in order to help her mother with physical therapy. She began gaining recognition during this decade after appearing in several Australian films, such as the action comedy BMX Bandits (1983) and the romantic comedy Windrider (1986). Throughout the rest of the 1980s, she appeared in various Australian television programs, including the 1987 miniseries Vietnam, for which she won her first Australian Film Institute Award.

Kidman next appeared in the Australian film Emerald City (1988), based on the play of the same name, which earned her a second Australian Film Institute Award. She then starred alongside Sam Neill in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm as Rae Ingram, the wife of a naval officer who is menaced by a castaway at sea, played by Billy Zane. The film proved to be her breakthrough role, and was one of the first films for which she gained international recognition. Regarding her performance, Variety commented how "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 before moving on to star alongside her then-boyfriend and future ex-husband, Tom Cruise, in the 1990 sports action film Days of Thunder, as a young doctor who falls in love with a NASCAR driver. Considered to be her international breakout film, it was among the highest-grossing films of the year.

In 1991, Kidman co-starred alongside Thandiwe 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 and critical acclaim (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. That 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. Regarding her performance, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said "[she] 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." For her performance, she received her first Golden Globe Award. In the following years, she 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 nuclear expert Dr. Julia Kelly, opposite George Clooney. The latter film grossed US$110 million worldwide. In 1998, she starred alongside Sandra Bullock in the romantic comedy Practical Magic as two witch sisters who face a threatening curse that prevents them from finding lasting love. While the film opened at the top of the charts during its North American opening weekend, it was a commercial box office failure. She returned to the stage that same year for the David Hare play The Blue Room, which opened in London. For her performance, she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress.

In 1999, Kidman reunited with then-husband Tom Cruise to portray a couple on a sexual odyssey in Eyes Wide Shut, their third film together and 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, she took on the role of 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 called it her best work since To Die For, and wrote "[she] 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." She subsequently received her second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, among several other awards and nominations, including her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Also in 2001, Kidman starred in Alejandro Amenábar's psychological 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, her performance earned her several award nominations, including a Goya Award nomination for Best Actress, in addition to receiving 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."

The following year, Kidman garnered critical acclaim for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in Stephen Daldry's The Hours, co-starring alongside Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. Kidman wore prosthetics, which were applied to her nose, in order to portray the author during 1920s England, making her look almost unrecognisable. The film was a critical success, earning several awards and nominations, including a nomination for the 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". She won numerous critic and industry awards for her performance, including her first BAFTA Award, third Golden Globe Award, and the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first Australian to win the award. During her Oscar's acceptance speech, she referenced the Iraq War which was occurring at the time when speaking about the importance of art 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." That same year, she was named the World's Most Beautiful Person by People magazine.

Following her Oscar win, Kidman appeared in three distinct films in 2003. The first of those, a leading role in director Lars von Trier's Dogville, was an experimental film set on a bare soundstage. Though the film divided critics in the United States, Kidman earned praise for her performance. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone 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 film was an adaptation of Philip Roth's novel The Human Stain, opposite Anthony Hopkins. Her third film that year was Anthony Minghella's war drama Cold Mountain, where she starred opposite Jude Law and Renée Zellweger, playing Southerner Ada Monroe, a woman who falls in love with Law's character and become separated by the American Civil War. Regarding her performance, 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 awards and nominations, most notably for the performances of the cast, with Kidman receiving her sixth Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress.

Established actress (2004-2009)
In 2004, Kidman starred in the drama film Birth, which sparked controversy over a scene in which she shares a bath with her co-star Cameron Bright, then aged ten. During a press conference at the 61st Venice International 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". For her performance, she received her seventh Golden Globe nomination. That same year, she starred alongside Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken and Glenn Close in the black comedy science-fiction film The Stepford Wives, a remake of the 1975 film of the same name, directed by Frank Oz. The following year, she starred opposite Sean Penn in the Sydney Pollack thriller The Interpreter, playing UN translator Silvia Broome, and starred alongside 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. For the latter film, she 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. No. 5 the Film, a 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, she was also featured as the 45th Most Powerful Celebrity on Forbes ' 2005 Celebrity 100 List. She made a reported US$14.5 million between 2004 and 2005. On People magazine's list of 2005's highest-paid actresses, Kidman came in second behind Julia Roberts, with a US$16–17 million per-film price tag.

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, becoming her highest-grossing film at the time. The following year, she starred in the science-fiction film The Invasion, a remake of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, 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. Also in 2007, she starred as the main antagonist Marisa Coulter in the fantasy-adventure film The Golden Compass, which grossed over US$370 million worldwide, also becoming one of her highest-grossing films to date.

The following year, Kidman reunited with Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann for the Australian period film Australia (2008), set in the remote Northern Territory during the Japanese attack on Darwin during World War II. Starring opposite Hugh Jackman, she played an Englishwoman feeling overwhelmed by the continent. Though the film received mixed reviews from critics, it turned out to be a box office success, grossing over $211 million worldwide against a budget of $130 million. In 2009, she appeared in the Rob Marshall musical Nine, portraying the muse Claudia Jenssen, alongside an ensemble cast consisting of Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Fergie, Kate Hudson 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, with Kidman earning her fourth Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, as part of the Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture award.

Biographical and independent films (2010-2015)
Kidman began the 2010s by producing and starring in the film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole, alongside Aaron Eckhart. Her performance as a grieving mother coping with the death of her son earned her critical acclaim, and she received nominations for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress. The following year, she appeared with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston in Dennis Dugan's romantic comedy Just Go with It, as a trophy wife, and subsequently starred alongside Nicolas Cage in director Joel Schumacher's action-thriller Trespass, with the stars playing a married couple taken hostage.

In 2012, Kidman starred alongside Clive Owen in the HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn, which depicted the relationship between journalist couple Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn. For her performance as Gellhorn, she received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. That same year, she portrayed death row groupie Charlotte Bless in Lee Daniels' adaptation of the Pete Dexter novel, The Paperboy (2012). The film competed at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and Kidman's performance garnered her nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award and the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, in addition to her second Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, her tenth nomination overall. Also in 2012, her audiobook recording of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse was released through Audible. The following year she starred as an unstable mother in Park Chan-wook's Stoker, which was released to positive reception 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 as the titular character in the biographical film Grace of Monaco, which 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 contemplative 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. She also starred in two films with Colin Firth that year, the first being the British-Australian historical drama The Railway Man, in which she 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. Also in 2014, she appeared in the live-action animated comedy film Paddington as the film's main antagonist.

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. That same year, she played a district attorney, opposite Julia Roberts and Chiwetel Ejiofor, in the film Secret in Their Eyes, 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, she 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. The production was met with considerable praise from critics, particularly for Kidman, and her return to the West End was hailed a success. For her performance, she won an Evening Standard Theatre Award and received a second Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress.