Nicole Kidman, Hollywood's new Grace Kelly
PUSSSYKATT
Nicole Kidman is Hollywood's new royalty. From fashion icon to box office star,
the former Mrs. Tom Cruise has fully arrived as an A-list celebrity —
eclipsing, for this year at least, even her famous ex-husband. (Related item:
Kidman steps up to the fashion plate.)
Since grabbing attention with 1989's Dead Calm as a tall, fair, fresh-faced
Australian redhead, she has been steadily building a career, her passion for
acting waylaid only by a happy marriage and the adoption of two children.
Now, at age 35, divorced, sharing custody of the kids but otherwise seemingly
on her own, Kidman is proving to be a woman in her prime, moving forward into a
new phase of her life and her career. The spark behind it all: shedding any
hint of herself to portray tortured author Virginia Woolf in the critically
acclaimed film The Hours.
This awards season, Kidman has won a Golden Globe, a British Academy of Film
and Television Arts best-actress award, a Berlin International Film Festival
award, the Las Vegas Film Critics Society best-actress award and countless rave
reviews.
On Sunday, she might add another: a Screen Actors Guild award. On March 23, she
could take home the ultimate: an Oscar.
What does she make of it all?
"Oh dear," she says, laughing. "I feel overwhelmed a little, to be completely
honest. I'm trying to keep my feet on the ground."
'I'm very good at daydreaming'
It's late in the afternoon in New York, where she has recently bought an
apartment after finally selling the Los Angeles home she and Cruise shared for
more than a decade. She has just finished her first day of filming her new
movie, Birth. Before audiences see that, however, she's already got Dogville,
The Human Stain and Cold Mountain ready for release. She has committed to
Alexander the Great and The Stepford Wives, and she has been offered
Bewitchedand Catwoman. In the fall, she starts shooting Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a
spy thriller, with Brad Pitt.
"I don't see myself as a movie star," she insists. "Stanley Kubrick always said
to me that I was a character actress. So I hope I get to play character roles,
like Virginia Woolf and Ada (in Cold Mountain, which is due at Christmas). The
women I'm drawn to at the moment, I feel a sense of wanting to honor them,
wanting to create something complicated and special. That requires something
more. It requires it existing in your psyche and your dreams."
She lives her characters but says she's not a workaholic. In fact, she says,
"I'm very good at daydreaming. I can go to extremes. That means I can actually
lie around and do nothing. Literally exist in my head."
And what's she thinking?
"Lots of things. It's embarrassing. Like my sister would say, 'What have you
done this afternoon?' Nothing. I can go from incredibly focused to incredibly
vague."
She says that comes from her father and her mother: Anthony, a biochemist and
clinical psychologist, and Janelle, a nursing instructor. They will be her
dates at the Oscars.
Her every move, from the color of her Golden Globes gown and oversized earrings
to her next movie proj-ect, is watched carefully. And she has managed to
cultivate an image as a hardworking talented actress, as well as glamour icon.
When she was in the perfect movie-star marriage, she gave up heels, yet fought
against being dubbed Mrs. Tom Cruise. Now, the Manolo Blahniks are on. With
pride.
And though Kidman dismisses the famous prosthetic Woolf nose she wore in The
Hours as an insignificant prop, it hid the well-known Kidman, allowing only the
character to emerge.
But when she was handed a red clown nose at the Golden Globes — a sort of
joke tribute to the Woolf nose — she refused to put it on. She didn't want to
joke about that. "No," she says. "Maybe in front of friends, not in front of
millions of people."
Her career is largely in the hands of two people — Kevin Huvane and Rick
Nicita, two of Hollywood's top agents. "They're very much a part of knowing the
kind of things I love to do, and they're very supportive."
When she calls in a panic wanting to back out of a film, as she often does in a
last-minute attack of insecurity, one of them will calm her down and tell her
to get on the plane.
It has been an "odd" career, she says.
How so?
"Because everything that has been successful for me has been something not
expected to be. Artistically, the times when I've made formulaic choices, they
haven't been my strengths. The artistic choices that I love and have no
expectation attached to them turn out great."
Which tells her?
"Don't deviate."
She reminds herself not to become too attached to any one thing at any
particular time.
"It's a journey of artistic expression," she says of filmmaking, stardom and
life. "A friend of mine just said, 'Enjoy it; it's fleeting.' There's so much
truth to it."
She worries that she won't work again?
She insists that's a common thought: "I've got another year and it's all over.
My mother's famous line: 'That's enough now. Come home.' "
Home, however, never satisfies her for long. Acting is in her blood. Besides,
her mother is also the one "who said there are very few people who get great
joy out of their work, so if you have that, you're very lucky."
Director John Duigan has known Nicole since she was 15. He has worked with her
on several films, including the 1991 movie Flirting, which also featured her
good friend Naomi Watts.
"One of the things that struck me most when she was young was how focused she
was and how capable," Duigan says. "She was very single-minded about her
acting."
Robert Benton has known her since Billy Bathgate and has just finished
directing her in The Human Stain. "Nicole has been my No. 1 choice time and
time again. Either she wasn't available or the schedule didn't work out. There
are a handful of actors I will walk through fire for, and she is one of them.
Gene Hackman and Paul Newman and Ed Harris are the others."
He doesn't see her as finally arriving. She was always here.
"I think she was always gifted beyond her years, mature beyond her years. I
think all the stuff that has happened to her has made her a richer actor.
Whatever unhappiness she has gone through — if there has been any — it's
brought a maturity and a sureness to her work."
But some insist that maturity was there years ago. Laura Ziskin co-produced the
1995 movie To Die For. Kidman won a best actress Globe for it, but the Oscars
ignored her that year. "To me that was the Oscar nomination she was robbed of.
It stunned us," Ziskin says. "It was a reluctance among other actors to accept
her. She was so beautiful; she was married to this big movie star."
Ziskin says the timing is much more in her favor now. "She is at a very good
age, to be in her mid-30s. She has grown into her beauty. ... She always had an
old-soul quality to her. She was only about 27, young, when I worked with her.
She was always very centered. As she gets older, fortunately for her, she gets
more interesting. As a human being, her defining characteristic is that she is
incredibly brave on all fronts. She is a gutsy girl."
Kidman tells a story:
"It's interesting," she says, "I just saw (director) Sam Mendes and he said,
'How are you feeling?' And I said, 'I feel overwhelmed, but I'm so glad to have
these opportunities because at the moment, it's flowing out of me. I don't
quite understand it.' And he said, 'It's called being in your 30s and being a
woman. It's an enormous amount of experience and you're being given an
opportunity to put those life experiences into your work.' "
Her fans seem to have newfound respect for her life experiences.
"I am thrilled that Nicole Kidman graced your January cover," a reader wrote in
March's Elle magazine. "She is an amazing beauty, with such a wonderful view of
life. She has shown us that no matter who you are, your life can be turned
upside down. I am inspired by her strength and courage."
While she does exude strength and confidence, Kidman allows a glimpse behind
the curtain of stardom.
"When you suddenly become very well known — and you're at Cannes with all
that craziness — there's a deep loneliness to it. When you share it with
somebody else in the way Tom and I shared it — there's a romanticism to it.
When you're alone, it's lonely. One minute you're surrounded by a lot of people
and you go back to your hotel room and you're ordering room service at 3 a.m.
and you think, 'Who do I call?' And that's the God's honest truth. You're lucky
to be able to order room service, but," she pauses, "it's surreal at times."
Duigan says this is a new time for her. "It's a transition stage: She had what
in many respects was a very happy marriage, and now that's behind her, and who
knows what's on the personal front?"
The answer, according to the British press, is that she and Jude Law were more
than co-stars on the set of Cold Mountain. According to Law and Kidman, that's
all they were.
She hasn't rebounded into anyone's arms. And maybe that's because she says she
spent a decade channeling much of her energy into her marriage.
"It wasn't a decision; it's just that's where my passion went. Now I have my
kids, my artistic expression."
Doesn't she think there might be a connection between the fact that she is
being taken seriously as an actress now and the fact that she is no longer Mrs.
Tom Cruise?
"I don't think so; do you? I do know my life has changed in all areas. I don't
know how to correlate it. I suppose I don't want to know."
* * *
By Ann Oldenburg, USA TODAY
Nicole Kidman is not only at the top of every casting director's list — every
fashion designer would love to dress her. "Every fashion designer and every
fashion designer's assistant and every fashion designer wannabe!" says Andre
Leon Talley, Vogue's editor at large. "She can do no wrong."
Says Talley: "She is the new Grace Kelly. She has given back to Hollywood the
impeccable grooming that Grace Kelly had in her heyday." (Related item:
Kidman's elegantly qualified competition.)
Says Hollywood stylist Phillip Bloch: "She's just the quintessential fashion
being. She is the end-all and be-all of the fashionistas. She has the body of a
model. She's tall, leggy and long. She wears jewelry like nobody's business."
Kidman has become such a fashion icon that she will open a new exhibit about
timeless style called Goddess, running May 1-Aug. 3 at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art's Costume Institute.
This goddess says she doesn't work exclusively with one stylist or one
designer.
"There are certain designers I think are great artists — I'm excited to watch
what they do and how they'll influence (people). I love Galliano and Lagerfeld,
and I think Tom Ford's doing beautiful work. There are so many good designers."
What does she most prefer for her own closet?
"I collect antique clothes. My mother dressed me in antique clothes from the
flea market."
Kidman's mother loved to sew and create.
"She would make me the most beautiful little dresses — she would embroider,
knit, sew. She'd make them for my dolls when I was little, too. So there's
always been a love of fabrics and ideas.
"It's creative — the way you dress."
Kidman has dabbled in designing clothes for friends and for her daughter, but
nothing that she would wear to the Oscars. "I won't go through a ton of choices
— it's one or two and that's it."
And, take note, designers: "I'm completely open."
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"PUSSSYKATT" <agcgoss...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030307084323...@mb-mu.aol.com...
> By Ann Oldenburg ,USA TODAY
>
> Nicole Kidman is Hollywood's new royalty. From fashion icon to box office
star,
> eclipsing, for this year at least, even her famous ex-husband. (Related
item:
> Kidman steps up to the fashion plate.)
>
> Since grabbing attention with 1989's Dead Calm as a tall, fair,
fresh-faced
> Australian redhead, she has been steadily building a career, her passion
for
> acting waylaid only by a happy marriage and the adoption of two children.
>
> Now, at age 35, divorced, sharing custody of the kids but otherwise
seemingly
> on her own, Kidman is proving to be a woman in her prime, moving forward
into a
> new phase of her life and her career. The spark behind it all: shedding
any
> hint of herself to portray tortured author Virginia Woolf in the
critically
> acclaimed film The Hours.
I don't agree with this statement at all.... "The Spark" was clearly her
divorce for Tom Cruise. She was no longer expected to stand in his
diminutive shadow, keeping her career beneath his.
Clearly she stepped forward as a dynamic leading lady with last years roles
in Moulin Rouge and The Others. Both were outstanding and critically
acclaimed as much as Virginia Woolf.
And, if you look at the timing - when she was filming Moulin Rouge is pretty
close to the time that her marriage to Lil' Tom began to fail. (Wasn't
there conjecture that she'd had an affair with Ewan, even that he fathered
the miscarried child?)
I'd be willing to bet *part* of the reason it failed was that she took the
part of a sexy dynamic woman that would certainly eclipse whatever project
Tommy was involved with...
> But when she was handed a red clown nose at the Golden Globes - a sort of
> joke tribute to the Woolf nose - she refused to put it on. She didn't want
to
> joke about that. "No," she says. "Maybe in front of friends, not in front
of
> millions of people."
>
> Her career is largely in the hands of two people - Kevin Huvane and Rick
> Whatever unhappiness she has gone through - if there has been any - it's
> "When you suddenly become very well known - and you're at Cannes with all
> that craziness - there's a deep loneliness to it. When you share it with
> somebody else in the way Tom and I shared it - there's a romanticism to
> Nicole Kidman is not only at the top of every casting director's list -
every
> fashion designer would love to dress her. "Every fashion designer and
every
> fashion designer's assistant and every fashion designer wannabe!" says
Andre
> Leon Talley, Vogue's editor at large. "She can do no wrong."
>
> Says Talley: "She is the new Grace Kelly. She has given back to Hollywood
the
> impeccable grooming that Grace Kelly had in her heyday." (Related item:
> Kidman's elegantly qualified competition.)
>
> Says Hollywood stylist Phillip Bloch: "She's just the quintessential
fashion
> being. She is the end-all and be-all of the fashionistas. She has the body
of a
> model. She's tall, leggy and long. She wears jewelry like nobody's
business."
>
> Kidman has become such a fashion icon that she will open a new exhibit
about
> timeless style called Goddess, running May 1-Aug. 3 at the Metropolitan
Museum
> of Art's Costume Institute.
>
> This goddess says she doesn't work exclusively with one stylist or one
> designer.
>
> "There are certain designers I think are great artists - I'm excited to
watch
> what they do and how they'll influence (people). I love Galliano and
Lagerfeld,
> and I think Tom Ford's doing beautiful work. There are so many good
designers."
>
> What does she most prefer for her own closet?
>
> "I collect antique clothes. My mother dressed me in antique clothes from
the
> flea market."
>
> Kidman's mother loved to sew and create.
>
> "She would make me the most beautiful little dresses - she would
embroider,
> knit, sew. She'd make them for my dolls when I was little, too. So there's
> always been a love of fabrics and ideas.
>
> "It's creative - the way you dress."
>
> Kidman has dabbled in designing clothes for friends and for her daughter,
but
> nothing that she would wear to the Oscars. "I won't go through a ton of
choices
> - it's one or two and that's it."
Dennis Lewis
wrote:
>
>Nicole Kidman is Hollywood's new royalty.
I'll bet Gwyneth is pissed.
Scott Kuli
but she can't be the new Grace Kelly, because he's no prince...although
she may be considered a princess.
In article <20030307084323...@mb-mu.aol.com>,
agcgoss...@aol.com says...