Nicole Kidman

Biography

Nicole Mary Kidman (born 20 June 1967) is an Australian and American actress and producer. Known for her work in blockbusters and independent films across many genres, she has consistently ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses since the late 1990s. Her accolades include an Academy Award, an Actor Award, a British Academy Film Award, six Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Volpi Cup. Kidman began her career in Australia with the 1983 films Bush Christmas and BMX Bandits. In 1989, her breakthrough came with lead roles in Dead Calm and the miniseries Bangkok Hilton. She rose to international prominence with a supporting role in Days of Thunder (1990) followed by leading roles in Far and Away (1992), To Die For (1995), Batman Forever (1995), Practical Magic (1998), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Kidman earned Academy Award nominations for her performances in Moulin Rouge! (2001), Rabbit Hole (2010), Lion (2016), and Being the Ricardos (2021). For her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002), she received the Academy Award for Best Actress and a shared Silver Bear for Best Actress. She also starred in acclaimed films such as Cold Mountain (2003), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), The Beguiled (2017), Bombshell (2019), The Northman (2022), and Babygirl (2024), the latter of which won her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. She achieved commercial success with the films The Others (2001), The Golden Compass (2007), Australia (2008), Paddington (2014), and Aquaman (2018). On television, she produced and starred in the HBO series Big Little Lies (2017–2019), for which she won the Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Limited Series and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. She also starred in the television movie Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012), as well as television series Top of the Lake: China Girl (2017), The Undoing (2020), Nine Perfect Strangers (2021–present), Special Ops: Lioness (2023–present), Expats (2024), The Perfect Couple (2024), and Scarpetta (2026-present). Kidman has served as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF since 1994 and UNWomen since 2006. She was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia in 2006. Divorced from actor Tom Cruise and country musician Keith Urban, she has two children from each marriage. In 2010, she founded the production company Blossom Films. In 2004 and 2018, Time 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. She was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, and in 2024, became the first Australian actor to receive the AFI Life Achievement Award.

== 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, Janelle Ann (née Glenny), a nursing instructor and member of the Women's Electoral Lobby, edited her husband's books; her father, Antony Kidman, was a biochemist, clinical psychologist, and author. She has a younger sister, Antonia, who is a journalist and television presenter. Having been born in the US to Australian parents, Kidman holds dual Australian and US citizenship. She has English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. Being born in Hawaii, she was given the Hawaiian name "Hōkūlani" ([hoːkuːˈlɐni]), 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. While living in Washington, D.C., following Kidman's birth during the Vietnam War, her parents participated in anti-Vietnam War protests. Her family eventually returned to Australia three years later. She grew up in Longueville, a suburb on Sydney's Lower North Shore, 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.

== Career ==

=== 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 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, 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 husband, Tom Cruise, in the 1990 sports action film Days of Thunder, as a young doctor who falls in love with a NASCAR driver. It was considered her international breakout film and was among the year's highest-grossing films. 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.

=== Critical acclaim and worldwide recognition (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 in the film, she received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. 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 $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 failure at the box office. 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 publicized 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 – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, among several other awards and nominations, including her first nomination for the Academy Award 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 $210 million worldwide, her performance earned her several award nominations, including for her second BAFTA and fifth Golden Globe. 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." A. O. Scott of The New York Times highlighted Kidman's performance, writing that she "embodies this unstable amalgam with a conviction that is in itself terrifying. The icy reserve that sometimes stands in the way of her expressive gifts here becomes the foundation of her most emotionally layered performance to date." 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, to portray the author during the 1920s in England, making her look almost unrecognizable. 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, 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 currently-ongoing Iraq War 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 distinctly different 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 during 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 nomination.

=== 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 performed well in the United States, both were international successes., she and Ferrell won the Razzie Award for Worst Screen Couple.