Nicole Kidman won the Academy Award as best actress for her portrayal of writer Virginia Woolf in the film The Hours (2002). Kidman was born in Hawaii but grew up in Australia, where she began acting in her teens. She married screen heartthrob Tom Cruise after they met while filming the race-car soap opera Days of Thunder (1990), and they were one of Hollywood’s most talked-about couples throughout the ‘90s. Her films during that era included Gus Van Sant’s To Die For (1995, based on the Pamela Smart case) and Stanley Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), in which she starred with Cruise. After a decade of marriage, Cruise and Kidman divorced, but her career soared as she continued to star in both mainstream Hollywood films and smaller, independent features. In 2001 she turned in an Oscar-nominated performance in Moulin Rouge and appeared in two other highly-acclaimed movies, Birthday Girl and The Others. Her other films include Far and Away (1992, with Cruise); Dogville (2003… read more
Here is a Hollywood actress who could easily be doing simple, inconsequential roles just for the money but has continued, throughout her whole career, no matter how successful she has become, to find challenging roles, risky projects, and interesting directors to work with. Her gutsiness has always thrilled me. She's terrific.
I was mesmerized from Moulin Rouge to Dogville. After that, the thrill was gone. Forever.
I find myself constantly defending this women as an actress - people passionately dislike her in Australia. I tell them they're watching her in the wrong films, she's at her best when she's ice cold.