Nothing Keeps Nicole Kidman From Her Work, Not Even a 102-Degree Fever
With her aquatic life and stratospheric career, Nicole Kidman is a creature of two realms. Starring roles in three new movies prove that she is as relevant — and impassioned — as ever.
Every single one of God’s creatures in this wine bar is looking at
Nicole Kidman, who gracefully excuses herself from our shared Caesar salad to float to the bathroom. As soon as Kidman gets up, a voraciously chatty woman nearby, who has been eyeing Kidman over her husband’s shoulder, stops trash-talking her next-door neighbor midsentence. The sole waitress watches Kidman cautiously from afar. Maybe they are gazing through her translucent skin, or wondering why Nicole Kidman, celebrated movie star, is dining at a strip mall wine bar at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, or perhaps they have never before seen a citizen of Oceania, a rare demographic in Nashville that comprises .2 percent of the populace. Regardless, they are joined in watching her amble preternaturally toward the bathroom, eyes trained on her legs, because no human being walks the way Nicole Kidman walks.
Arms rigidly pressed to her sides, posture geometrically perfect, she moves at the pace of one step every two seconds, like a local deity blessing onlookers with her presence and some scattered eye contact. When Kidman says hello to the gossipmonger near us, the woman doesn’t say anything, focusing all of her energy on not imploding. She can’t eke out a single syllable while beholding Nicole Kidman, queen of 360 Bistro, empress of this West Nashville strip mall, acclaimed actor, gazelle on two legs, moving glacially about the wine bar.
“Something you need to be aware of,” begins Karyn Kusama, who directed Kidman in this fall’s
Destroyer, “is that she is legitimately statuesque.”
Onscreen, Kidman delivers performances that can best be described as emotional onslaughts. Remember when she exploded in grief during
Rabbit Hole? When she mauled your heart in
Moulin Rouge? Her quiet agony in
Dogville? Of course you do, because the odds are extremely high that you have seen her in at least one of these films, and even higher that she has appeared in a movie you have seen in the last year. If I asked you to name five actresses off the top of your head, Nicole Kidman would be one of them, probably in the top three.
This is why everybody is staring. They’re all thinking in unison, What is this person really like? I have no idea, and our interview is almost over.
The sky in Nashville is so picturesque that it must be joking — it is the bluest-blue blue. Underneath it, everything is bathed in 80-degree sunlight, including the western reach of the city, where a highway meets a strip mall and forks in two. This is not your average strip mall, but a strip mall in one of Nashville’s most affluent neighborhoods. Meaning: It has a bistro and a Pilates studio and a juice bar.
Kidman, 51, moved here after she married country-music singer (and fellow Australian) Keith Urban in 2006, and it has since become home to the couple and their two daughters. After this interview, Kidman is going to Reading Corner at one of her daughters’ schools. “It’s where you go and read books,” she explains perfectly, “and [my daughter] chooses the book the night before, and then I read it to the whole class. I act out all of the characters.”
In addition to her masterful one-woman performances at Reading Corner, Kidman’s three newest films are premiering within months of each other: The Kusama-directed
Destroyer stars Kidman as detective Erin Bell, a rogue FBI agent who seeks revenge on a gang leader after he wrongs her in a big way; then there’s
Boy Erased, in which Kidman stars as a staunchly religious Christian woman who sends her queer son to conversion therapy; finally, there’s
Aquaman, which is the story of Aquaman (Kidman plays his aquamom).
“I’m very left-handed and very lateral,” she says. “I just have the weirdest taste, which I follow. Right now, you’re seeing that.” She’s referring to the press cycle that has her oscillating between embittered ex-cop, pastor’s wife, and comic-book ocean monarch. “I still kind of work in the same way that I did 30 years ago. Each film, or each reason for doing something, vibrates from more than just the idea of making them.” Her thought trails off, then: “Oh, it’s nice that that truck has pulled up.”
A truck has pulled up in front of the picture window near our table, obscuring the sun that has been backlighting Kidman until now. I hadn’t noticed that her hair is soaking wet.
“My husband just had to go to Canada this morning, so we took a swim.”
Naively, I ask this ridiculous question: You have a pool?
“We have a pool.”
More journalistic inquiry: Are you just splashing each other, or are you doing laps?
“We’re Australian, both of us, so water is very therapeutic,” she says. “We have a beach house, and we will get up in the morning before we have breakfast, and we’ll go in the ocean. Reese [Witherspoon] is our next-door neighbor. Reese will be going, ‘What are you doing in the water, you lovebirds?’ She’ll tease us because she rarely goes in the ocean. ‘You crazy Australian kids.’ ”
Do you do anything else to annoy Reese Witherspoon? What about water is therapeutic? Are you thirsty, literally or figuratively, and did this thirst attract you to the role of Aquaman’s mother, Queen Atlanna? What, in general, are you thirsty for? These are all fair-game questions for interviewing Nicole Kidman.
But I ask none of them, because I am in the presence of both a movie star and somebody of great personal importance to me. (I saw
The Hours at a very formative point in my life.) The only question on my mind at all times is, What is it like to be movie star Nicole Kidman? And more meta: What is it like to be in the presence of movie star Nicole Kidman?
So I ask the next logical question: What’s your sign?
Nicole Kidman’s birthday sits on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer, the former marked by its childlike tendencies and the latter by its maternal dominion over
all other signs. I am including this because astrology is an exact science, and also because Kidman agrees with me that these are apt descriptions of her personality. So there.
It would be reductive to characterize each of her forthcoming roles as moms, foremost, but motherhood is a powerful force for each. In
Destroyer, her character is navigating a very complicated relationship with her daughter, who is coming of age, which results in the film’s most impactful scene. In
Boy Erased, she plays Nancy, a Christian parent who sends her teenage son to conversion therapy. It is the maternal instinct in Nancy that ends up saving her son, even though it’s at odds with her faith.
“To be able to play a mother...” Kidman begins, then pauses for a minute. In that pause there is an infinite and quiet universe, as if the ability to play a mother in a movie is both an insurmountable burden and the most incredible gift. Of course, she does more than play a mother — she is a mother, to four kids, but this is a different thing.
