The character Nicole Kidman found despicable: “I hate that she did that”
Nicole Kidman is the kind of actor who has mastered the art of taking creative risks and following the fun in every project. From working with infamous auteurs like Stanley Kubrick, Jonathan Glazer and Lars Von Trier, to art-house independent directors like Gus Van Sant, Yorgos Lanthimos and Andrea Arnold, Kidman has a rare filmography that is impossible to categorise due to her constant shape-shifting and astounding ability to adapt to every genre under the sun. However, there are some characters that are more difficult than others to play, and Kidman recently spoke about one that she particularly struggled with.
Many actors have spoken about the necessity of being able to empathise with each character they play, finding some core human feeling that they can link to their own experiences, regardless of the extreme ways in which they might react to that feeling.
Whether it be a psychopathic killer or a homophobic parent, some would say that the job of any actor is to humanise even the most inhumane actions. After her role as Nancy Eamon in Boy Erased, playing the Baptist mother of a boy who is sent to a conversion therapy camp to avoid being rejected by his community.
However, despite being familiar with playing controversial characters, Kidman struggled to find a way into the character, saying she found the notion of trying to ‘cure’ a gay person despicable, explaining, “I hate that she did that, but at the same time, she didn’t do it out of maliciousness. She thought that this was going to help him.”
When looking at Kidman’s body of work, you can definitely see a fascination with morally ambiguous decisions and characters who are being pushed towards the edge of reason, playing Anna in Birth, who begins to explore her feelings of grief through a relationship with a child, convinced that he is the reincarnation of her dead husband. In her upcoming film Babygirl, she plays a woman called Romy who begins an affair with a younger man, putting her career and family life on the line for desire, passion, and the chance to be seen again.
Despite the complexities of these stories and the way they often focus on extreme circumstances, Kidman is able to pull a universal truth from these stories and highlight the commonality at the core of these feelings, looking at love, grief, acceptance and understanding through the lens of sometimes controversial situations.
While she may play a mother who has made an evil and damaging decision on behalf of her son, her ability to find light and dark within each role is what makes her such a beguiling performer. Some filmmakers have mirrored the sentiment that a good film should present two sides of an argument, and in the case of Kidman, she is the living embodiment of this idea in her performances. Kidman’s upcoming projects include Babygirl, directed by Halina Reijn, and Lioness, a miniseries directed by Kaitlyn Meade, exceeding her previous pledge of working with a female director every 18 months and narrowing the gender gap in Hollywood.
