“That’s what you need”: the co-star Nicole Kidman called “one of the great actors”
Working with an actor that you just don’t get along with has the potential to destroy any semblance of chemistry on screen, and only the most professional of stars seem to be able to put their differences aside.
I mean, just look at Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams – they managed to play a pretty convincing couple in The Notebook despite initially finding it hard to get along, and Gosling even asked director Nick Cassavetes to replace McAdams at one point, only for the pair to wind up dating afterwards.
Ultimately, The Notebook became a huge success, and the behind-the-scenes strain didn’t seem to affect the finished film. Still, it doesn’t really matter if a movie is successful or not, what an actor really wants is surely a good filming experience – one that brings out the best in them and makes showing up to work as stress-free as possible, and we all know that in an industry as stressful as Hollywood, having a co-star who you enjoy working with is probably one of the nicest ways to get through a tough shooting day.
Luckily for Nicole Kidman, she was happy to be cast alongside a certain star in The Hours, a movie that won the actor her first Oscar – playing the iconic modernist writer Virginia Woolf, Kidman donned prosthetics that made her look wholly unrecognisable, and she spoke in a posh British accent, assuming the role of an artist under pressure.
Playing her husband, Leonard Woolf, was Stephen Dillane, who’d already found significant success on stage, having won a Tony and Laurence Olivier Award for The Real Thing in 2000. He’d not been in too many major movies before The Hours, but as Woolf, he was able to bring the skill he’d already long perfected on the stage to the silver screen, and it was a proper turning point for the actor.
Reflecting on the movie, directed by Stephen Daldry, Kidman told GQ, “I had Stephen Dillane, who’s one of the great actors. First of all, that’s what you need. When you’re working together, it’s always a ‘together’.”
The Australian actor found herself able to bounce off someone as skilled as Dillane with ease, and clearly being in the presence of such a professional and experienced star really helped to elevate the film to a level of sheer brilliance. When two incredibly talented actors get the chance to share the screen, it’s not hard to tell that you’re watching a pair that are evenly matched, as was the case with Kidman and Dillane.
While Kidman won the Oscar, Dillane sadly failed to win any accolades for The Hours, although he was nominated by the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards. While he has since appeared in many great movies – and he is particularly well-known for his performance as Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones – Dillane remains a relatively underrated figure in Hollywood.
Yet, to Kidman, he’ll always be one of the greatest actors in the industry and one of the best co-stars she has ever worked with.
