Nicole Kidman 1
The Oscar nominated actress talks about her work, her life and Virginia Woolf…Talk about landing on your feet: Nicole Kidman is doing so well these days you could almost say it's a shame Tom didn't cruise long ago. Summoning the raw emotion caused by the end of her high-profile marriage, Kidman has since shone in challenging roles with rave reviews.
This year she follows the success of The Others and her Oscar-nominated performance in Moulin Rouge with three films adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winning novels - such as the Golden Globe-winning (and Oscar-nominated) Virginia Woolf in Michael Cunningham's The Hours (co-starring Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore), in Cold Mountain (by Charles Fraser) and The Human Stain (by Philip Roth).
Kidman, who was born in Hawaii, was raised with her younger sister, Antonia, in Sydney by mum Janelle (a nursing instructor) and dad Anthony (a biochemist and psychologist). A high school dropout, she says her love of literature led her to be an actor.
Playing Virginia Woolf
While not an obvious candidate for the role of Woolf - thanks to makeup artists, test audiences didn't even recognise the ravishing redhead as the dowdy author - Kidman immersed herself in the life and work of the literary and feminist icon, learning to write with her right hand (she's a lefty) and rolling her own cigarettes.
'I didn't want to do it,' Kidman admits of the film, which began production soon after her marriage ended. 'I tried to pull out. I actually called my agent and said, "I don't want to do this. This isn't the right thing for me. It's too much at this stage, and I just need to hibernate." And my friends all said, "Get on the plane and do it. Go get lost in it.'"
Ultimately, however, Kidman was grateful for the role and the vision of director Stephen Daldry. 'I thought, wow, I get this opportunity to really go and do something I've never done before and exist within a character in a completely different way,' says the actress. 'And it was in this time of my life when I was just raw enough to do it. And everything kind of came together... To share this film with these two women - that doesn't happen often. And I felt very, very privileged to be able to say, I made a film with Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.'
Asked whether her recent experience informed her introspective portrayal of the writer, Kidman allows that 'there's a loneliness to Virginia. And I think once you start to deal with loneliness ... all of that feeds into your art.
1 | 2 | next
printer friendly
send to a friend
Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Horoscopes| Message Boards | Quizzes | Newsletters | Join
iVillage Ltd is a UK company registered in England & Wales (3837269) at 80-110 New Oxford Street, London WC1 1HB
