Nicole Kidman: “I wish I had nothing to hide”

We end up at Kidman’s apartment in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, and she suggests we go eat something. Nicole says that there are a lot of places around, cuisines are different, “price policies” too. She knows the best places in the Village to dine, where to dine, where to drink, where to drink big, where to dance, and where to dance. We are walking along the street of a nice, cozy, old district with no signs of glossy novelty, more bohemian than bourgeois, although the local population is accomplished and wealthy. A beautiful evening, with the promise of a warm night and a sunny day tomorrow. Warm yellow light pours from the windows, people are relaxed, as usual in the evening Manhattan. Kidman is taller than all the women on the street, and this is, after all, Kidman … But for some reason she does not catch the eye of passers-by. She is wearing glasses that radically change her image of a “dream girl”. What are they changing for? On the image of a woman who has things to do. And Nicole Kidman really has a lot to do. Therefore, in life, she does not work on her image. She lights a cigarette, her forehead almost against the drainpipe from the wind. “I’m not going to quit: it’s a bad habit, but you have to catch the joys of this life. There are actually a lot of them, but it’s hard to recognize your own,” she admits with a smile. We pass El Faro (Spanish Cuisine) and then Jarnac (French Bistro). I like both. Nicole thinks there might be no seats, stops and looks inside El Faro through the window. People at the tables, seeing Nicole Kidman in the window, stop chewing, freeze and look at her for a long time. A strange feeling is reflected on their faces: they are used to looking at Kidman and obviously did not expect that they would live to see the moment when Kidman would look at them … And Nicole feels quite natural: she is not one of those who finally settled on the other side of the screen.

The most important features

Do you like to feel like a movie star?

One thing is clear to me: there are many things in the world more interesting than cinema.

Do you have to experience suffering to be a tragic actress?

You need to know that suffering is real. And everyone has their own way to knowledge.

You were only 25 when you adopted Isabella, your first child. Why?

Tom and I loved each other very much and were very happy. We thought we had to find a way to share our happiness. And found.

Is fame an isolating factor?

When I need, I go where I want. Nothing stops me.

Are there things you wanted to do but couldn’t learn?

I still don’t know how to insert contact lenses.

What do you never do in your life?

I don’t sunbathe. Like all Australians, I swim and love surfing. But I never sunbathe.

Psychologies: It seems that in your case, the profession and personal life are connected to a greater extent than usually with actors. You were one of many Hollywood beauties, but after your divorce from Tom Cruise, you played. perhaps the most tragic role in modern film history is that of Virginia Woolf in The Hours by Stephen Daldry. Is there a connection here?

Nicole Kidman: Thank you, but… I wasn’t “front of the stage” not because I was in Tom’s shadow, but because I liked his shadow, which hid me a little. And sheltering … When Tom was gone in my life, I gained a new experience. Divorce was hell, but made me grow internally. Our parting made me different to some extent. A person of a different content – respectively, and an actress of other needs and opportunities. Now I don’t need shadows to protect from the sun.

More than five years have passed between your breakup with Cruise and a new serious relationship (with Keith Urban. – Approx. ed.). Unusually for a woman of your data and capabilities …

N.K .: My life is such that a person who agrees to be around gets me less than he has a right to hope. For me, each new film is also a relationship, also a kind of romance … I really love one story that is instructive for the actors and in general for everyone. Dustin Hoffman, then an aspiring actor, starred in Marathon Man with Laurence Olivier. And he wanted to consult with the master: he said that he did not know how to survive this role, that it carried a terrible emotional burden, that he could not stand it, that a nervous breakdown was not far off. And Olivier smiled knowingly and replied: “Just try to play.” He meant that you can’t worry about everything in the world, you can’t give all of yourself and take everything into yourself, sometimes you just have to play, act professionally … I never manage to follow his advice. Therefore, I need a person who will knock me out of the rut of my traditional way of living and feeling. And then, in my life, I said goodbye a lot. When you have to go through a divorce, discuss its material side, share children … it’s devastating. I stopped seeing the drama in another breakup. But, having learned to say goodbye calmly, I still don’t know how to quickly say “hello”. I need time for this.

And it seems that you were also waiting for approval from your close-knit family …

N.K .: Indeed, I prefer my family to approve of my choice. In order for my mother, Antonia, my sister, to like the person I like, I spend so much time with her family that sometimes I tell her husband that he has two wives, no matter how he refuses … Yes, it is important for me that he likes and Nami (actress Naomi Watts has been Kidman’s best friend for over 20 years. – Approx. ed.). Dad once said after my divorce from Tom: “I would not want us to go through what we once went through again.” “We” means we are my family. Who supported, and maybe saved me. Mom, dad, Anthony. Toni actually moved in with me for a while in Los Angeles, took a vacation – for an unknown amount of time – and came just to be with me. We even slept in the same bed – I needed someone to just hold me, physically. I felt terrible, deeply unhappy, humiliated … Three months after Tom announced our official separation, Tony and I were in Cannes with the Moulin Rouge. Our show was very, very successful. We left the hall… This crowd… flashes… screams… It felt like oxygen had run out around me. I just couldn’t breathe. I must have looked at Tony as if I was yelling, “Help!” She understood, grabbed my hand, pushed the guards aside, dragged me to the toilet, unlaced this damn dress with a corset – well, in the style of the role, pulled me out of the high heels. I remember this feeling: the end of a marriage, a relationship, a stage in life – like an acute lack of oxygen.

However, after the divorce, you did not turn to a psychotherapist, as is customary in the United States.

N.K .: My father is a professional psychologist. And always, even as a child, when I went to Catholic school, and confession was the law there, he told me: “Nick, it’s perfectly normal to have secrets. There are things that are only yours and nobody else, you have the right not to show them to anyone. I then decided not to go to a therapist, so as not to “talk out” my life dry, because when you talk a lot about it, it somehow … decreases in size, in scale. I preferred introspection. I was looking for reasons for my addiction.

Found?

N.K .: The important thing is to try to find it.

Do you think that only the family you owe a return to life?

N.K .: No, also the role of Virginia Woolf in The Hours – thanks to her, I understood the suffering of another person. What I was experiencing was due primarily to external circumstances. What she experienced was an inner hopelessness, a personal impasse. When you leave yourself, it is worse than when you are left. And the children also helped me … You can cover yourself with a blanket with your head, curl up, bury your nose in the back of the sofa and decide that you will lie like that until death. But when someone six years old comes up to you and asks: “Mom, are we going to have breakfast?” I have to get up, make breakfast and start the day. And with it a new life.

It seems that a sense of responsibility is one of the main things for you?

N.K .: Perhaps. Mom always said: you should not try too hard to be an exemplary girl. But I would like to end my life without doing anything that I seriously regret. I was a good child and, it seems, did not let my parents down. But I have this: to experience something new, to find out what it is like, to feel life, the world – and everything myself … Then, sometimes, a feeling of guilt takes over.

And this is how I am arranged: I must confess, admit my guilt, if you like, publicly. Most adults live differently. They have some kind of isolated reservoir where their guilt, their regrets, their fears are stored. I don’t have a tank.

Isn’t it because you were brought up in a Catholic way? With the idea of ​​redemption?

N.K .: The point is different. Maybe it’s a kind of obsession, but I want to be myself, the real me. For me to have nothing to hide. And I have nothing to hide. Yes, I am a complex person and a complex woman. But, I assure you, nothing particularly exciting has happened in my life and is not happening. The really exciting thing is going on in my head. Fantasies are a big part of my life. I love to lie alone in the dark and think. Of course, it’s good to lie in the dark in someone’s arms, but I never had the opportunity to enjoy it for a long time … Yes, I would hate myself if I started to be afraid of loneliness in the dark. I rejoice in him.

Where do you think this increased responsibility comes from?

N.K .: By nature I am distracted and dreamy. But here are my parents … Social concern is one of their main properties. They are people of the left. Dad is a doctor and a psychologist, but a significant part of his life is protecting the rights of employees. Mom is a committed feminist. She always insisted on our independence with her sister to such an extent that at times we felt almost rejected. Mom insisted that she would not babysit us, she believed that we should be independent in everything. Here is an example. I used to come home from school complaining about nicknames. And already in the fourth grade, I reached a meter 75 centimeters and, moreover, was pale as paper – in Australia, in the paradise of bronze-bodied surfers! For all this I was teased by the Heron. So, I came in tears from school, and there was a feminist mother waiting there, who honored me for depending on the opinions of outsiders and on standards imposed by unknown people! In addition, my mother struggled with my left-handedness. Then it was customary to retrain left-handers to right-handers, it was given to me with tears, and my parents believed that it was necessary, and not because you had to be right-handed, but because you had to “learn to overcome yourself.” In general, my mother controlled us very strictly. When I was doing my first film at 14, she came to the set and was outraged that I was eating all kinds of unhealthy food there. I was ready to fall through the ground – I was so ashamed that my mother was controlling me. And now I control Bella in the same way: wear this, don’t eat that. Recently, I just heard my mother’s intonation in my voice … Well, these “daughter-mothers” are apparently inevitable.

What about your father?

N.K .: Dad wanted to have a son and raised me as a boy. Therefore, various extreme sports and athletics are my childhood. But I didn’t suffer from it at all, I liked it. I… love to actively use my body. And dad also believed that children should develop imagination … When I said that I wanted to become an actress, he calmly noted that my path was not easy, because I would be higher than my possible partners. And he suggested not to pronounce other people’s words, but to write their own. Dad encouraged me in my writing experiments, I wrote entire barn books. And I still write stories! But in general, our parents raised us as sisters as people who have their own opinion, their own voice, ask questions. There were always refugees in our house – Afghans, Iranians, Somalis, a Chinese student from Tiananmen Square. Parents helped everyone, and rightly so. I try to live the same.

You left school when your mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Why?

N.K .: To always be where she was most needed – next to her mother.

How did the kids handle your divorce?

N.K .: What matters is how parents behave. We tried to make sure nothing changed for them. They didn’t have to move: Bella, Connor and I then stayed in our house. You know, it is very important in childhood to sleep on your bed. Home is where your furniture is. Nothing has changed for them in this respect. And they spend a lot of time with Tom.

Your character from Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diana Arbus is involved in a strange relationship with a neighbor who suffers from a rare disease – his body is covered with fur. In the eyes of everyone except Diana, he is a freak. Could you love an ugly man?

N.K .: Why not? Of course she could. If we are talking about love. After all, when you love, you love a person, not a face and not a body. Love what makes it the main thing. Let’s call it soul. You can’t love an ugly one, but on the one you love, even wrinkles do not appear.

Still, you are a brave man.

N.K .: I don’t consider myself brave. Rather, a little crazy.

You got married again. Do you believe in marriage?

N.K .: I’m terribly romantic. I believe in relationships. And I prefer to be married. I always wanted to find a person … although no, rather, I wanted him to find me and say: “I have been looking for you for so long and finally found you!” But I know: what I do, and the family cannot be combined. Now I have something to compare with:

What about loyalty? What is marital fidelity for you – something from the past, a protective social myth or reality?

N.K .: Anyway, I don’t think that actual sexual fidelity is the most important thing. It is elevated to an absolute because people are prone to simple definitions of situations and even their own feelings about them. For me, so mental, infidelity not manifested in actions is more dangerous – it is thinner, it is elusive, although it is no less real for relationships. And how far can one go in this “mental” infidelity without really changing? And where is this reality of betrayal? I don’t have answers. Some questions.

Your profession and degree of fame are associated with extreme forms of publicity. Even the miscarriage that happened after your divorce became public knowledge …

N.K .: … And yet I take such things philosophically. Tom hated the paparazzi and sued the tabloids, but I really didn’t care. Now I care: my parents are getting old, they will read some nonsense and worry … Recently, my mother called me: “Is it true that you are pregnant? It’s printed in all the papers!”

And what do you answer in these cases?

N.K .: Yes, I don’t even need to answer, my mother herself knows very well: I will tell her the truth first.

What does it mean to be “philosophical”?

N.K .: The publicity of personal life is a side effect. But there is a main effect: people are interested in you, you are significant in their eyes. It’s okay to be grateful for that. That’s why I don’t like “star” talk like: “Ah, I hate these flashlights, ah, I don’t like to dress up for the crowd.” Stupidity! You are lucky, you are lucky, you should perceive such life opportunities as a gift. Dressing up, looking pretty, and being looked at, even stared at, is my way of thanking people for appreciating me.

Private bussiness

• 1967 June 20 in Honolulu (Hawaii, USA) in a family of Australians – nurse Janil McNeil and biochemist and clinical psychologist Anthony Kidman (now director of the Health and Psychology Department at the University of Technology Sydney) – daughter Nicole Mary was born.
• 1970 Kidman family returns home to Australia; Birth of Nicole’s sister, Antonia (now a journalist and Australian television presenter).
• 1971 Begins ballet.
• 1975 Debuts as the girl Grace on the classic American television show Saturday Night Live.
• 1982 Begins classes at the Sydney Theater for Young People and the Philip Street Theatre.
• 1983 Role in the Australian television series Under the Skin.
• 1984 Drops out of school due to illness of mother who is diagnosed with breast cancer.
• 1989 “Bangkok Hilton”, an Australian television series in which the Russian audience first saw Kidman.
• 1990 Marries actor Tom Cruise.
• 1992 Adopts Isabella Jane (b. 1992).
• 1994 Becomes a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Development Fund (UNICEF).
• 1995 Adopts Connor Anthony (b. 1995); starred in the films “To Die For …” by Gus Van Sant and “Batman Forever” by Joel Schumacher.
• 1996 “Portrait of a Lady” by Jane Campion, after which Kidman spends two weeks in bed with a diagnosis of “emotional stress”.
• 1998 “Practical Magic” by Griffin Dunn.
• 1999 Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick; for her role in the London play “The Blue Room” (in which Kidman plays a number of scenes naked), she was nominated for an award. Laurence Olivier, one of the UK’s top theatrical awards.
• 2000 Significantly contributes to Hillary Clinton’s US Senate campaign.
• 2001 Divorce from Cruz; “Moulin Rouge” by Baz Lurmen, where Kidman herself performs all the musical numbers; “The Others” by Alejandro Amenabar.
• 2003 “Oscar” for the role of Virginia Woolf in “The Hours” by Stephen Daldry; “Dogville” by Lars von Trier; “Cold Mountain” by Anthony Minghella; honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; a serious personal relationship with black rock musician Leni Kravitz.
• 2004 Becomes the “face” of Chanel perfumery and starred in the commercial for Chanel No. 5 Baz Lurmen; receives the honorary title of citizen of the world from the UN.
• 2005 “The Witch” by Nora Ephron, Kidman’s first lead role in a comedy.
• 2006 “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diana Arbus” by Steven Scheinberg; becomes a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); marries Keith Urban, Australian country musician and Grammy Award winner: along with the invitation to the wedding, the guests received a letter from the young people asking them not to give them gifts, but instead to donate to a number of humanitarian organizations.
• 2007 Filmed in Baz Lurmen’s historical-national epic “Australia”.