When Nicole Kidman went so method she rejected her own name: “I would ignore them”
Method acting is a funny old business, both from the perspective of the stars who practice it and the public’s reaction to it. For the longest time, the intense dedication to “the method” that certain actors displayed was seen as going above and beyond for a role, and they were celebrated for it. At a certain point, though, method acting began to be frowned upon, but only for select performers. After all, as Nicole Kidman has readily explained, she still goes method when the need arises, and hasn’t faced any criticism for it.
In 2021, Kidman starred as Masha Dmitrichenko in Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers, a glossy thriller based on a book by Big Little Lies’ Liane Moriarty. In the show, Kidman played the Russian founder of a mysterious wellness retreat, which promises to heal and transform its guests over the course of 10 days, but may use questionable tactics along the way to achieve that transformation.
The show featured an all-star cast backing up Kidman, including Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon, Luke Evans, Samara Weaving, Regina Hall, and Bobby Cannavale. However, none of these stars actually met Kidman during the five-month shoot; or, at least, not in the way they expected to. Instead, they only interacted with Masha, because Kidman refused to break character the entire time.
“I’d only respond as Masha,” Kidman told a TCA panel. “I wanted a very calm healing energy to emanate all the time, so I remember going over to people and sort of putting my hand on their heart, holding their hand.” However, if any cast member talked to her or used the name ‘Nicole,’ the iconic star confessed, “I would completely ignore them. I’d only respond to Masha.”
To illustrate how far Kidman disappeared into her character, she didn’t only play Masha while on set. When she came home to her husband, Keith Urban, she continued speaking as the ethereal, willfully obtuse wellness leader. “He enjoyed Masha when she came home,” she chuckled to E! News. “He kind of liked the Russian accent, I have to say.”
According to Kidman, approaching the role in this all-consuming manner was the only way she felt it would come across authentically. The last thing she wanted was for Masha to seem like a famous actor putting on a silly accent and chewing the scenery. “The only way I could actually relate to people was that way,” she mused, “because I felt like otherwise I would be doing a performance, and I didn’t want to feel that way.”
Indeed, Kidman has a deep-seated fear of anyone thinking she doesn’t give everything to her performances. She has no desire to be an actor who simply shows up, says their lines, cashes the cheque, and never thinks of a project again. “I’m willing to go to whatever place to make it real and deep,” she once told GQ. “You can absolutely tell when people are phoning something in. For me, that doesn’t work. I’m not moved by that.”
So, why has Kidman been able to commit to the “method” so wholeheartedly, while not generating the ire repeat offenders like Jared Leto, Shia LaBeouf, Robert De Niro, and even Daniel Day-Lewis face these days? Hell, there’s even been a push in recent years for established stars like Anthony Hopkins, Brian Cox, and Mads Mikkelsen to ridicule method acting, while Toni Collette scathingly dubbed it “utter wankery” which is “a bit cheap and somewhat of a betrayal” of the acting process.
Ultimately, is there any difference between Ashton Kutcher following Steve Jobs’ fruitarian diet for a mostly forgotten 2013 biopic and Kidman pretending to her husband that she is Russian while making a middlingly received prestige TV thriller? Probably not. Is there a double standard at play here? Potentially.
The real answer, though, may lie in the fact that most of Kidman’s method practices don’t make life unbearable for the people working around her, unlike the Letos and LaBeoufs of this world, and her results generally can’t be argued with, so she is afforded more leeway than most method-y performers.
