Nicole Kidman: Inside Her Mystical World

She has had a lot more going on the last year, but it’s all very normal in her life. It started off with Los Angeles in February for the release of the television series, Big Little Lies, which she co-produced with actor Reese Witherspoon, and for which she received the Emmy for best actress in a limited series. Then the Cannes Film Festival happened in May where she came looking glamorous as always, presenting the film Killing of a Sacred Deer by Yórgos Lánthimos for which she received the 70th Anniversary Prize, an honour given to the greats of cinema.

She looked scintillating during the Toronto International Film Festival in a Prada dress. Talking to her about her career and upcoming films, we knew that 2018, too, would be a Kidman year. Excerpts:

L’Officiel India DigitalRead L’Officiel India in the digital libraryEvery issue and every cover story, on TCG Media.Read now

For two years now, you haven’t slowed down, portraying characters that are incredibly intense and vastly different from each other. How has all of it happened?

I find it rather amusing to think about this because when I was pregnant with my daughter, Sunday, nine years ago, I wanted to retire. I have been working since I was 14, stopped attending school at 16 to become an actress with my parents’ blessings. I told myself that now it was time to slow down and relax. I finally had a happy private life, but perhaps it was time to live quietly and peacefully in Nashville, where Keith (Urban) and I have a farm. My smart mother had, at the time, advised me to always have ‘one foot in the bath’, just in case I wanted to go back to acting at any point (laughs).

Are you able to get out unscathed from the roles you play?

I often come out feeling alive after filming. Which is why I filmed Aquaman in Australia, apart from the pleasure I got from working in my homeland, I needed to have some fun. I played a mermaid in a superhero film. I had done Big Little Lies, in which I play a victim of domestic abuse, immediately after which came my character in Killing of a Sacred Deer. I had filmed one role after another, such as The Beguiled by Sofia Coppola and the crime series Top of the Lake: China Girl by Jane Campion.

You play a mermaid in Aquaman. It suits you so well.

It was nice to sit pretty on a rock with my hair loose over my shoulders, but I am not a mermaid in the true sense of the word, because I don’t move my bottom from left to right (laughs). I am more of a queen, with a beautiful crown, the mother of Aquaman. The film is based on the comics and my daughters were completely hypnotised by the filming process, so much so that one of them wants to become a director. I owed them this. Thanks to all the very adult movies that I have done, my kids could never come on set.

You have also acted in comedies, The Upside by Neil Burger, the American remake of the French film Intouchables.

I have enjoyed the original very much. Doing the film was like a breath of fresh air. Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart reinterpreted the roles of François Cluzet and Omar Sy.

You have worked with so many legends from cinema. How would you describe your relationship with them?

Before everything else, I am a cinephile. When I did Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick, I felt as if it was my destiny. I am not someone who has a lot of confidence in herself. But at the same time, I love the adventures I have on screen, things I would not even think of doing in my life, that is how I find security in this world, and I never judge the character I play. It is human nature that I am passionate about, that is what can go the distance. And so, I put myself in the hands of the director, and I am so aware that they will help me unveil the truth of who I am playing and I would give them my all. Nonetheless they often demand things of me that are quite disconcerting such as Yórgos Lánthimos.

Your colleague Colin Farrell had prepared you that working with the director of Lobster would be disturbing in a manner of speaking.

Yes, I had been warned (laughs)! In Killing of a Sacred Deer, Yórgos has created a Greek tragedy in a modern nightmarish setting. Once you have absorbed the workings of his universe, which resonates in a very peculiar manner on the psyche of the spectator, it is fascinating to play. Yórgos reminds me a lot of Stanley Kubrick, who also detested the naturalistic game. For an actress of my age, to have had the opportunity to have worked in such a wide range of movies, and now those that are more realistic, like Boy Erased directed by Australian actor Joel Edgerton, in which I starred alongside Russell Crowe. It was a film about forced reconversion of homosexuals by the Church, something quite unheard of.

What have been the turning points in your career?

To Die For (1995) by Gus Van Sant gave me credibility. The Portrait of a Lady (1996) by Jane Campion, Moulin Rouge (2001) by Baz Luhrmann, Dogville (2003) by Lars Von Trier. Lion, last year, a poignant movie by Garth Davis about one’s beginnings and adoption. I am not expecting a fourth Oscar nomination for the role of the adoptive mother. Becoming friends with the director, John Cameron Mitchell, who gave me a small role in the movie How to Talk to Girls at Parties, which we had presented at Cannes, with Elle Fanning.

Television is also an important step, isn’t it?

Yes, even though nothing can replace cinema. Reese and I produced Big Little Lies together, a show that depicts the lives of bourgeois women full of cracks and secrets. In Monterey, because we were unable to get enough roles of complex female characters. It is about our frustrations as actresses in Hollywood, which is an extremely male-oriented industry. But it was also the first season of Top of the Lake that made me want to get into television.

Your reaction to finding out that the role of the lesbian mother in season 2 of Top of the Lake had been reserved for you by Jane Campion.

It is one of the most difficult roles I have done. It gave me one of the hardest times! I have four children, and I do a lot of ‘mother’ roles, but this one was something else. I play the adoptive mother of a girl who had been abandoned by the detective played by Elisabeth Moss. I have long grey hair, my character, Julia, lives with this ferocious woman, full of contradictions and downright hilarious. But to interiorise of that!

After working with Sofia Coppola, you found another female director who has a very personal style, Rebecca Miller.

I have promised myself to work with at least one female director every year. I was very moved by Sofia’s ability to create an atmosphere, and by her mix of determination and gentleness. Rebecca, I had already met before when I was filming for Nine with her husband, Daniel Day Lewis. She is a magnificent woman and artist. We filmed She Came to Me together with Steve Carell and Amy Schumer, a comedy in the world of contemporary opera.

It is impossible to say your name without the image of glamour being brought to mind. What is your rapport with fashion today?

Spellbound. All of it has a certain Cinderella aspect to it. The dresses and gowns that I wear for galas, I have to return them afterwards. But I am not satisfied by just calling my stylist in New York. I am personally very interested in fashion. The enormous campaign for Chanel N° 5 with Baz Luhrmann is a very vivid memory I have. I recently went to the Dior exhibit in Melbourne, I was bewitched by the beauty of the dresses, an exhibit of works of art indeed, more so when I realised that I had worn two of those spectacular creations. It is a true privilege to be able to wear their works of art on the red carpet to show them to the entire world.

From the February 2018 issue of L’Officiel India.