VENICE: One of Hollywood’s biggest stars who is never afraid to push herself, Nicole Kidman ventured even further from her comfort zone with erotic thriller “Babygirl”, which saw her named best actress in Venice on Saturday.
A queen of the silver screen since the 1990s, the Oscar-winning Australian admitted to nerves when the no-holds-barred film from Dutch director Halina Reijn premiered in the Italian watery city last week.
Kidman, 57, played Romy, a married, high-powered New York CEO who embarks on a torrid, sado-masochistic affair with a new company intern.
Kidman had delved into the genre in 1999 with her then-husband Tom Cruise in Stanley Kubrick’s final film, “Eyes Wide Shut,” a similarly in-depth look at sexuality and the human psyche.
But she admitted her latest film left her “exposed and vulnerable and frightened… when it’s given to the world”.
Unfortunately she was not in Venice to accept her award, after arriving in the Italian city to hear that her “beautiful, brave mother” Janelle had died.
“I’m in shock, and I have to go to my family. But this award is for her. She shaped me, she guided me, and she made me,” Kidman said in a statement read out by Reijn.
Master of reinvention
Kidman won her Academy Award in 2003, for her transformation into writer Virginia Woolf in “The Hours”.
Reinvention has been a theme in Kidman’s storied career, her chameleonic skill taking the high school dropout from Australian teen movies including “BMX Bandits” to Hollywood’s A-list.
She has never lacked daring either, throwing herself in riskier indie roles throughout her four decades in film – from Gus Van Sant’s “To Die For” (1995), for which she won a Golden Globe, to Karyn Kusama’s “Destroyer” (2018).
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She was first nominated for the best actress Oscar in 2002, after her turn in fellow Australian Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!”, and scored another nomination in 2011 for “Rabbit Hole”.
Another nomination followed, in 2017 for “Lion” – the story of a young man from India adopted by an Australian family who searches for his long-lost relatives on Google Earth.
She was also nominated for an Oscar two years ago, for her role as queen of comedy Lucille Ball in “Being the Ricardos”.
Big and small screen queen
Kidman took to drama from a young age after her family moved from Honolulu, where she was born, to Sydney when she was four.
She made her feature debut in the Australian television film “Bush Christmas” in 1983, the same year she left school at 16 to pursue acting full-time, and won international praise for the thriller “Dead Calm” in 1989.
The following year, she met Cruise on the set of the racetrack romance “Days of Thunder”.
Once one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood, Kidman took a step back from acting after falling for New Zealand-born country musician Keith Urban, whom she married in 2006.
Like many top actors and directors, Kidman has been lured in recent years to the small screen, winning plaudits for a string of television roles, including in “Big Little Lies”, which earned her an Emmy, and Jane Campion’s “Top of the Lake”.
Kidman and Urban have two daughters, Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret.
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