Nicole Kidman reveals she almost retired from acting after becoming a mother
Hollywood star Nicole Kidman has revealed that when she gave birth to her first daughter with husband Keith Urban in 2008, she contemplated leaving acting altogether.
At that stage in her career, the actor had already won an Academy Award for her performance in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours in 2003 and three Golden Globe Awards. She had also established herself as a performer with significant range and a willingness to try new things with roles in Jonathan Glazer’s Birth, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, and Lars von Trier’s Dogville.
Off camera, Kidman had endured a high-profile personal life, thanks to her 11-year marriage to Tom Cruise. When she married Urban, a country music star, in 2006, she moved away from Hollywood to Nashville, Tennessee, and began to lead a more private life.
Speaking to CBS News, Kidman revealed that stepping outside of Hollywood and having her first child with Urban tempted her to leave her life as a movie star and actor behind her.
“When I get birth to (Sunday Kidman-Urban), I was like, ‘Well, I think I’m pretty much done now,’” she remembered, saying that it was her mother, Janelle Kidman, who had pushed her to continue her career. “We were living on a farm,” Kidman recounted, “And that’s when my mother said, ‘I wouldn’t give up completely. Keep a finger sort of in it.’”
Despite feeling certain about her decision to step away from the business, Kidman followed her mother’s advice and continued acting sporadically in the coming years before returning with a vengeance in the late 2010s. Although she lowered her professional output early in her children’s lives, she still managed to snag another Oscar nomination for her role in John Cameron Mitchell’s harrowing film about parental grief, Rabbit Hole, in 2011.
In the interview with CBS, Kidman paid further tribute to her mother, who died this September, revealing that she had learned the hard way that women did not often have the opportunity to reach professional fulfilment, especially after having children. Her mother “was from a generation that didn’t have the opportunities that I had, that she had helped create for her daughters,” Kidman said. “So that’s probably something that she wished she’d had when she was little.”
Kidman has given some of the most daring and respected performances of her career in the 16 years since she contemplated leaving acting behind her. This year, she stars in Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, an erotic thriller in which she plays a high-powered businesswoman who enters into a steamy sadomasochistic affair with a much younger intern.
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