The risqué role Nicole Kidman needed to fight for: “It was a bit of a risk to cast me”
These days, it feels like Nicole Kidman is never away from the screen, which has a lot to do with the Academy Award winner’s sudden, and seemingly endless, obsession with being in as many miniseries as humanly possible.
Since 2020, Kidman has appeared in eight features, which is hardly prolific, especially when two of them were Aquaman flicks. On the small screen, though, she’s amassed six roles in the same timeframe, accounting for over 50 episodes in total, making her an increasingly ubiquitous presence.
One of the many perks that come with being an Oscar, Bafta, two-time Primetime Emmy, and six-time Golden Globe-winning household name is that you can play whoever you want in whatever you want, because there aren’t many filmmakers or showrunners who’d say no to a star of her calibre.
Things weren’t quite the same at the turn of the millennium, even if it’s a touch ironic that Kidman had to fight hard and repeatedly pitch herself for a film that ended up being released in the year she officially graduated from being an undeniably talented performer to the name at the top of every wish list.
In 2001, Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! was released in June, earning almost $200 million at the box office, winning two Oscars, landing Kidman on the ‘Best Actress’ shortlist for the first time, and winning her a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actress – Musical or Comedy’.
Three months later, Alejandro Amenábar’s supernatural chiller, The Others, made even more money in cinemas, secured her a Globe nod in the ‘Drama’ category, and reinforced her bankability. The day before it premiered in theatres, Jez Butterworth’s Birthday Girl held its maiden screening at the Venice Film Festival and flew under the radar by default.
In the comedy/thriller hybrid with a hefty dollop of eroticism, Kidman plays a Russian mail-order bride, with the provocative new spouse luring Ben Chaplin’s lonely banker out of his shell. As it turns out, she’s part of a larger scam, using the hold she has over her new spouse to lure him into a potentially lucrative con.
It was unlike anything she’d ever done before, which is why she had some convincing to do. “I’d read and liked the script, and had to basically convince Jez to cast me in it, because it was a risk to cast me as a Russian girl,” Kidman told Female. “You see, I had this vision of being able to improvise in Russian, because I wanted to do that if the director called for it.”
Birthday Girl was her least successful release of the year by quite a considerable distance, but playing a conniving and frequently unclothed minx was completely out of her wheelhouse, and it helped add another string to her bow.
