Nicole Kidman Drops Her Armor

When I first talked to Nicole Kidman in London in late August, we met in a curtained alcove of a blandly grand hotel restaurant in Mayfair. Decanted from a transatlantic flight—she had gone home to Nashville to settle her two teenage daughters, Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith Margaret, 14, into a new school year before returning here to finish filming Practical Magic 2 with Sandra Bullock—she shimmered in a white silk jacquard sundress and gold ballerina slippers. Her strawberry blond hair was drawn back into an elegant ponytail, and on one finger flashed an emerald-cut diamond: spectacular, spectacular, as big as the Ritz.

Kidman was eloquent and warm, leavening her more introspective thoughts with a twinkly laugh. By way of introduction, I mentioned that I often wrote about people in war, and she leaned forward to tell me that when she first took up her role as a UN ambassador in 2006, she had to be taught how to listen to the stories of women in Kosovo, many of whom had suffered sexual violence, because “I would absorb them to the point where I couldn’t even function…sensorily, emotionally.” As we went on to discuss trauma and suffering and telling stories, we fell into frank and easy conversation. Ten minutes flew by before I remembered I was supposed to be conducting an interview.

Kidman’s movie-star exterior is shiny, implacable, flawless, but inside is the soft stuff: intuitive, porous, sensitive. She often used the word open in describing herself. Her acting seems to meld the persona and the personal—a photogenic clarity and stillness that draws on a deep well of human emotion. Kidman said that Anthony Minghella, who directed her in the 2003 film Cold Mountain, once observed that she was “skinless.” “I’ve always remembered it,” she told me. “I thought: I’m not sure that’s good, but I look back now that he’s gone”—Minghella died in 2008—“and I sort of understand what he meant. It’s okay, but sometimes you’ve got to put on armor, to protect, when you are skinless.”Kidman (journalistic norms would require me to add her age here, but Kidman told me she finds this trope “ridiculous and unnecessary,” so I will leave it out) began acting at 14 in her native Sydney. She moved from teenage stardom in Australian films and miniseries to front-row Hollywood, starring opposite Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder in 1990, marrying him and tabloiding through a decade of red-carpet triumphs, critically acclaimed performances, and inevitably a few box office flops. A divorce from Cruise, an Oscar for The Hours, and an engagement to Lenny Kravitz followed, before she settled down to married life in Nashville with Aussie country singer Keith Urban. Over almost 40 years, she has alternated between art house films and blockbusters, genre-shifting from Viking revenge to period drama, from taut thrillers, horror, family dysfunction to quirky comedy and binge-worthy, glossy TV. She has played Grace Kelly, Gertrude Bell, Lucille Ball, Martha Gellhorn, and Diane Arbus, and won awards too numerous to mention. Her production company, Blossom Films, founded in 2010, is thriving. Kidman’s career trajectory—up and up—has defied what was once expected of actresses over the age of 40, and defined a new generation of women filmmakers.