Nicole Kidman: The Life Story of a Screen Legend

Nicole Kidman has been a star for forty years, and she has reinvented herself more times than almost any actor in history, from Australian teenager to Hollywood wife to Oscar winner to television powerhouse, and each reinvention has been more interesting than the last. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1967, to Australian parents, raised in Sydney, she started acting as a teenager, became famous in Australia, moved to Hollywood, married Tom Cruise, divorced him, won an Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf, and then, in her fifties, became the most powerful woman in television, producing and starring in Big Little Lies and a dozen other series. Her life story is about longevity, about reinvention, and about a woman who has never stopped working, never stopped taking risks, and never let anyone else define her.

Honolulu, Sydney and an Australian Childhood

Nicole Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1967, while her parents were studying there, but she grew up in Sydney, Australia, and she has always described herself as Australian, with an Australian accent, an Australian sense of humour, and an Australian determination to succeed. She was a tall, shy, red-haired girl who loved to act, who was teased at school for her height and her looks, and who found, in the theatre, a place where being different was an advantage, not a disadvantage.

Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1967, to Australian parents who were studying in the United States at the time, and the family returned to Sydney, Australia, when she was a small child. She grew up in Sydney, in a suburb called Lane Cove, and she attended North Sydney Girls’ High School, where she was involved in drama and where she first discovered a love of acting. She was tall for her age, shy, and self-conscious about her red hair and her pale skin, and she has spoken about being teased at school, and about how acting gave her a confidence she did not have in everyday life. She began taking acting classes as a teenager, and she appeared in Australian television and film while still at school, a precocious start that marked her as a talent to watch, even before she had left Australia.

Australian Stardom and Dead Calm

Nicole Kidman became a star in Australia before she was twenty, in films and television that made her a household name in her home country, and the role that brought her to the world’s attention was Dead Calm, a thriller set on a yacht, in which she played a woman terrorised by a stranger at sea. The film was a hit, it showed her range, and it proved she could carry a thriller, and it led, inevitably, to Hollywood, where a new chapter, and a new life, was waiting.

Her early Australian work included the television series Vietnam and the film BMX Bandits in 1983, a light-hearted adventure that gave her her first leading role as a teenager. In 1989 she starred in Dead Calm, directed by Phillip Noyce, playing Rae Ingram, a woman on a sailing holiday with her husband who is terrorised by a stranger, played by Billy Zane, a role that required her to be vulnerable, resourceful and terrified, often in the same scene. The film was a critical and commercial success, and Kidman’s performance was widely praised, with critics in America and Britain noting her beauty, her talent and her screen presence. Dead Calm mattered because it was her passport to Hollywood, the film that made American casting directors notice her, and that led to her first American films, and to a career that would soon become global.

Hollywood, Tom Cruise and the Nineties

The 1990s were the decade when Nicole Kidman became a Hollywood star, and also the decade when she became famous as Mrs. Tom Cruise, a label that defined her in the press, even as she was building a career of her own in films like Days of Thunder, Far and Away, Batman Forever and To Die For. She was beautiful, talented and married to the biggest star in the world, and the combination made her one of the most photographed women on the planet, and also one of the most misunderstood, because the marriage overshadowed the work, even when the work was extraordinary.

She moved to Hollywood in the early 1990s, and her first American films included Days of Thunder in 1990, in which she starred opposite Tom Cruise, whom she would later marry, playing a doctor who falls in love with a race car driver. She starred in Far and Away in 1992, also with Cruise, and in Batman Forever in 1995, playing Dr. Chase Meridian, a role that made her a mainstream star and that showed she could handle a blockbuster. In 1995 she also starred in To Die For, directed by Gus Van Sant, playing Suzanne Stone, a small-town weather girl who will do anything to become famous, a dark, funny, chilling performance that is now regarded as one of the best of her career. Her marriage to Cruise, from 1990 to 2001, made her a tabloid fixture, and she has spoken about the difficulty of being defined by a marriage, and about the relief of being able to build a career on her own terms after it ended.

Moulin Rouge, The Others and the Turn

The turn in Nicole Kidman’s career came at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, when she took on roles that were strange, bold and unforgettable, in Moulin Rouge, a musical about a courtesan in Paris, and in The Others, a ghost story set in a dark house in Jersey. Both films showed a different Kidman, one who was willing to sing, to dance, to be scared, and to take risks, and both films were hits, and both proved that she was not just a beautiful wife, she was a serious actor with a range that few of her contemporaries could match.

In 2001 she starred in Moulin Rouge, directed by Baz Luhrmann, playing Satine, a courtesan at the famous Paris cabaret, a role that required her to sing, to dance and to die beautifully, and that earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. The same year she starred in The Others, a gothic horror film in which she played Grace, a mother in a dark, isolated house who believes her home is haunted, a performance that was restrained, eerie and deeply unsettling. These two films, released within months of each other, showed her range in a way that few years in any actor’s career ever do, because Satine and Grace have almost nothing in common, and Kidman played both of them completely. The turn mattered because it came after her divorce, and it marked the beginning of a new chapter, in which she chose her roles for herself, and in which she proved, definitively, that she was a star in her own right.

The Hours and the Oscar

The Hours was the film that won Nicole Kidman the Academy Award, and it did so with a performance that was almost unrecognisable, because she played Virginia Woolf, the English writer, with a prosthetic nose, with a different voice, and with a stillness that made audiences forget they were watching a movie star. The film, which tells the stories of three women in three different times, all connected by Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, gave Kidman the role of a lifetime, and she responded with a performance that is still regarded as one of the finest of the century.

In 2002 she starred as Virginia Woolf in The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry, playing the writer in the 1920s, as she struggles with mental illness and with the writing of Mrs. Dalloway, a role that required her to disappear into a character who was nothing like herself. She wore a prosthetic nose, she changed her voice, she adopted a stillness and a sadness that made Woolf feel real, and critics praised the transformation, noting that Kidman had sacrificed her beauty for the role, and that the sacrifice had paid off. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, as well as the BAFTA and the Golden Globe, a clean sweep that confirmed her as one of the finest actors in the world, and that silenced, for good, anyone who had dismissed her as just a pretty face. The Hours also marked a peak, because it came after a decade of hard work, of reinvention, and of proving herself, and the Oscar felt, to Kidman and to audiences, like a vindication, a recognition that she had earned her place.

Big Little Lies and the Television Reinvention

In her fifties, Nicole Kidman did something extraordinary, she reinvented herself again, this time as a television powerhouse, producing and starring in Big Little Lies, a series about wealthy mothers in Monterey, California, whose perfect lives hide dark secrets. The show was a hit, it won Emmys, it made Kidman a producer, and it opened a new chapter in her career, in which she has become one of the most prolific and powerful women in television, with a production company, Blossom Films, and a string of hit series.

In 2017 she starred in and executive produced Big Little Lies, playing Celeste Wright, a wealthy lawyer in an abusive marriage, a role that required her to play a woman who is beautiful, successful and terrified, often in the same scene. The series, based on the novel by Liane Moriarty, became a huge critical and popular success, winning Emmy Awards, including one for Kidman as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series, and it was praised for its writing, its direction and its performances. She has since produced and starred in a series of television projects, including The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers and Expats, through her production company, Blossom Films, which she founded with her producing partner. This television reinvention matters because it came at an age when Hollywood usually discards actresses, and Kidman, instead of disappearing, became more powerful, more prolific and more interesting than she had ever been, proving that a career can have many acts.

Australia, Family and a Life in Nashville

For all her fame, Nicole Kidman has built a life that is grounded in family, in Australia, and in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, the country singer Keith Urban, and their two daughters. She has spoken about the importance of home, about raising her children away from Hollywood, and about the balance between a career that takes her around the world and a life that is, at its centre, ordinary, with school runs, with family dinners, and with the simple pleasures of being a mother and a wife.

She married Keith Urban, the Australian country singer, in 2006, and the couple have two daughters together, Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret, and they live primarily in Nashville, Tennessee, with a home in Sydney as well. She has spoken about the importance of family, about the joy of being a mother, and about the difficulty of balancing a demanding career with a family life, and she has said that her children are the most important thing in her life. She has kept a connection to Australia throughout her career, returning often, speaking about it with pride, and supporting Australian film and television, a loyalty that Australians appreciate. This family life is central to who she is, and she has said that it gives her a stability and a perspective that fame cannot, and that it is the reason she has been able to sustain a career for forty years without losing herself.

A Legend Who Keeps Reinventing Herself

Nicole Kidman’s story is, in the end, a story about reinvention, because she has been an Australian teen star, a Hollywood wife, an Oscar winner, a musical star, a horror star, and a television producer, and each time she has changed, she has done it completely, without looking back, and without apologising. She is a legend, not because she has been famous for forty years, but because she has been interesting for forty years, and that is a much rarer achievement, and one that very few actors, male or female, can claim.

Her filmography spans four decades, with more than seventy films and a growing list of television series, a body of work that is unusually long, unusually varied, and unusually consistent in its quality. She has won an Oscar, a BAFTA, Golden Globes and Emmys, a collection of awards that places her among the most honoured actors in history, and she has done it while raising a family and while navigating a public life that has not always been kind. She has worked with the greatest directors in the world, from Stanley Kubrick to Baz Luhrmann to Jane Campion, and each of them has praised her dedication, her intelligence and her willingness to take risks. Whatever she does next, whether it is another film, another series, or another reinvention, she will do it on her own terms, and that is the most interesting thing about her, that after forty years, she is still surprising us, and she is still, unmistakably, Nicole Kidman.

The Accent, the Height and the Things She Was Teased For

Nicole Kidman was teased at school for her height, for her red hair, and for her pale skin, and she has spoken about how those things, which made her feel different as a child, became her greatest assets as an actor, because they made her distinctive, they made her memorable, and they made her impossible to ignore. Her height, which was a burden in a schoolyard, became a presence on screen, her red hair became iconic, and her pale skin became a canvas for characters who are otherworldly, elegant and strange, and that transformation, from teased schoolgirl to screen legend, is one of the most hopeful parts of her story.

She was tall for her age as a child, and she has spoken about being self-conscious about her height, and about the teasing she experienced at school, an experience that many tall girls will recognise. Her red hair, which set her apart, became one of her defining features, and she has worn it in many colours and styles throughout her career, from the red of her youth to the blonde of her Hollywood years, each one marking a different chapter. Her Australian accent, which she has kept, has become part of her identity, and she has spoken about the importance of staying Australian, even after forty years in Hollywood, a loyalty to home that Australians appreciate.

My Take:

My honest view is that Nicole Kidman is the most interesting actor of her generation, and I say interesting rather than best, because her career is not a straight line, it is a series of reinventions, each one more surprising than the last, and that willingness to change is what makes her fascinating. She was an Australian teen star, then a Hollywood wife, then an Oscar winner, then a television producer, and each time she changed, she did it completely, she did not cling to the last version of herself, she let it go, and she became someone new. Most actors find one thing that works and repeat it forever, Kidman finds one thing that works, does it brilliantly, and then walks away from it, and that takes a courage that is rare in any field, let alone in Hollywood.

What I admire about her acting is the transformation, because she disappears into a role in a way that very few stars can, or will. She wore a prosthetic nose for Virginia Woolf, she sang and danced for Satine, she played a terrified mother in The Others, she played an abused wife in Big Little Lies, and in each case, you forget you are watching Nicole Kidman, you see only the character, and that is the highest compliment you can pay an actor. Most stars play themselves, Kidman plays other people, and she does it so completely that audiences sometimes forget how famous she is, which is exactly the point.

Suzanne Stone, in To Die For, is a monster in a weather girl’s smile, a small-town woman who will do anything, including murder, to become famous, and Kidman played her with a brightness and a ruthlessness that made her both hilarious and terrifying. The performance was ahead of its time, because it understood, in 1995, the culture of fame that would come to dominate the next thirty years, and Kidman, who was herself becoming famous, played a woman who wanted fame more than anything, with a self-awareness that was extraordinary. It is a film that gets better every year, and a performance that deserves to be seen by anyone who thinks Kidman is just a beautiful face, because the face is the mask, and the performance is what is happening underneath it, which is the whole point of the film.

The divorce could have ended her, and the world, frankly, expected it to. She was married to the biggest star on the planet, and when that marriage ended, the assumption was that she would disappear, fade, become a footnote in someone else’s story. Instead she did the opposite: Moulin Rouge, The Others, an Oscar, and a career that became entirely her own. That is not just a run of good films, it is a reclamation, a woman taking back her own story in public, with the whole world watching, and succeeding. It resonates far beyond Hollywood, because it is about what happens when a woman decides she is more than someone’s wife, and then proves it, film by film, until the proof is impossible to argue with.

Reinvention is not a sign of failure in Kidman’s story, it is a sign of life. She has reinvented herself at twenty, at thirty, at forty, at fifty, and each time she did it by choosing work that scared her, working with directors who challenged her, and refusing to be defined by her last success. Most people are afraid to change, because change is risky, and the risk is real. But Kidman shows that the greater risk is not changing, staying the same, becoming a parody of yourself, repeating the thing that worked until it stops working and you do not notice. The lesson travels beyond acting, into any field where a person feels stuck: the way out is not to wait for permission to change, it is to choose the frightening work and let the change follow the choice.

The production company, the fame, the talent, the experience: Kidman has all of it, and she has shown, again and again, that she will do the unexpected with it. I hope she keeps producing, keeps acting, keeps making more television, and keeps surprising us, because a world with Nicole Kidman in it is a more interesting world, and the surprises are the point. A legend, in the usual telling, is someone who stays the same, a statue you visit; Kidman is the opposite kind, one who keeps changing and keeps getting better, and the changing is the legend. I expect the next choice she makes to be something I did not predict, because prediction has been the losing bet with her for forty years, and I see no reason to place it now.

Legend is the word people use for Kidman, and legends are supposed to be finished, statues, memories, a career you look back on. She is not finished, she is still working, still producing, still acting, still reinventing herself, and that is what makes her a living legend rather than a remembered one. She is still writing her story, still surprising us, still taking risks, and that is rarer than being a legend, because most legends stop, they rest, they become their reputation, and the reputation does the work for them. Kidman does not rest, she keeps going, and the going is the legend, not the awards, not the films, but the refusal to stop, which is a harder achievement than any single performance, because it has to be renewed every morning.

Forty years in, and more powerful, more interesting, and more productive than she was at twenty: that is Kidman’s answer to anyone who thinks a career has an end. She is in her fifties, producing television, starring in films, winning awards, and doing it all on her own terms, because she kept learning, kept changing, and kept working while other people were planning their retirements. Too old is a lie, and she is the proof, because the best work can come last, if you let it, and if you refuse the story that says your best years are behind you at forty. That is a lesson for anyone, in any field, who has ever been told they are too old, because the telling is usually done by people who stopped growing, and Kidman, plainly, never did. The growing never stopped, and the career is the proof of it.

The Others is the quiet ghost story that shows the side of Kidman the big films do not, a restraint, a stillness, a fear played entirely in the eyes. She is a mother in a dark house, convinced her children are in danger, and she plays that conviction with such intensity that the audience believes her, even when the truth turns out to be stranger than she imagines. That belief is the mark of a great actor, making the audience see the world as the character sees it, even when the character is wrong, and doing it without shouting, without spectacle, with only a look and a silence. It is one of the most underrated performances of her career, and it is the one I would show someone who wanted to understand what she can do when everything is taken away except the acting itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was Nicole Kidman born?

Nicole Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1967, to Australian parents who were studying in the United States at the time. The family returned to Sydney, Australia, when she was a small child, and she grew up there, describing herself as Australian.

What film did Nicole Kidman win an Oscar for?

Kidman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours in 2002. She wore a prosthetic nose for the role and changed her voice, and she also won the BAFTA and the Golden Globe for the performance.

Was Nicole Kidman married to Tom Cruise?

Yes, Kidman was married to Tom Cruise from 1990 to 2001. She has spoken about the difficulty of being defined by the marriage and about the relief of building a career on her own terms after it ended, with films such as Moulin Rouge and The Others.

What is Big Little Lies?

Big Little Lies is the television series in which Kidman starred as Celeste Wright and served as executive producer, premiering in 2017. Based on the novel by Liane Moriarty, it became a huge success, winning Emmy Awards, including one for Kidman as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series.

What is Nicole Kidman’s production company?

Kidman’s production company is Blossom Films, which she founded with her producing partner. Through it she has produced and starred in series including Big Little Lies, The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers and Expats.