‘Crying and gasping’: Nicole Kidman spills on nightmares, mortality and that iconic ‘divorce’ photo
Taking a seat at the table among Australia’s most successful entertainment exports, Nicole Kidman has spoken about her state of mind following the death of her mother and the release of her boldest feature film in years, the erotic R-rated thriller, Babygirl.
Described as one of Hollywood’s most versatile, bankable and hard-working stars, Kidman, 57, lets her guard down in a wide-ranging interview for British GQ for its Men of the Year cover story and reveals the nightmares and sleepless nights she’s endured.
Over oysters and yellowtail sashimi at a London restaurant, she speaks frankly about the industry that she loves, the parents she has lost and the daughters she shares with husband Keith Urban.
She’s also happy to set the record straight on viral memes (of which there are many) – including the famous photo of her apparently celebrating her divorce from the Mission: Impossible actor Tom Cruise in 2001.
Emotions surface
In the business of making movies and TV shows for more than four decades, losing her father Antony in 2014 [her mother Janelle died during the Venice Film Festival premiere of Babygirl and a week after the GQ interview], Kidman admits the older she gets, the more her emotions are close to the surface.
“Mortality. Connection. Life coming and hitting you. And loss of parents and raising children and marriage and all of the things that go into making you a fully sentient human,” she said.
“I’m in all of those places. So life is, whew.
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“It’s definitely a journey. And it hits you as you get older how… it’s a wake up at 3am crying and gasping kind of thing. If you’re in it and not numbing yourself to it. And I’m in it. Fully in it.”
Kidman says the meme circulating of her standing on the footpath, arms outstretched, widely believed to have been taken leaving her lawyer’s office, was from a film.
“That was not me; that was from a film [she doesn’t name which one]. That wasn’t real life.
“I know that image.”
‘Penetrates my dreams’
In between the fun hits like Moulin Rouge! and To Die For, Kidman has starred in several big-name projects with trauma themes, roles that she says she can’t just shrug off when the cameras stop rolling.
The year after her divorce, she won an Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours.
In 2003, she played a rape victim attacked by numerous men in Dogville, and in revenge incites mass murder.
Then there was Birth, where she plays a widow who believes her 10-year-old son is the reincarnation of her husband.
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More recently, she played a domestic abuse victim in Big Little Lies and in Expats, her character was in a morgue to identify the body of a child believed to be her son.
Mixed reactions
“You can absolutely tell when people are phoning something in,” she tells GQ.
“For me, that doesn’t work. I’m not moved by that.
“I get sick or I get disturbed … it penetrates my dreams. I don’t sleep well. I shake. I have all sorts of different physical manifestations from it.”
In an interview with Elle earlier this year, she revealed the reaction she had when viewing her father’s open coffin in 2014.
“I literally started laughing because I was so grief-stricken and so devastated. Even at other times in my life, I’ve laughed at inappropriate times because I have this weird short-circuiting.
“It’s like you need this moment to keep you alive, in a way, otherwise you’ll die. It’s too much pain.”
‘Super afraid’
British GQ spoke to several producers and directors about her body of work, all describing a fearless, egoless talent ready to, indeed, be fully in it.
“Seeing her act for me is like an exorcism,” Babygirl writer and director Halina Reijn said.
“She goes beyond ego, beyond sanity and beyond fear… It’s not that she’s not afraid, you know. She’s super afraid, but she still goes there.”
Presenting Kidman with the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in April, Oscar winner Meryl Streep said “people call it bravery when an actress bares all and leaps off into the unknown, [when] she dives deep into the darker parts of what it is to be a human being”.
Streep reckons it’s not bravery, but Kidman’s love of movie-making.
Never more apparent than in the meme of her promotion of AMC Cinemas post-Covid to get people back out watching films, and her viral “heartbreak feels good in a place like this” comment.
“I’ll do anything for cinema, so you can meme me as much as you want,” she tells GQ.
