“I threw a rock”: when Nicole Kidman’s method acting turned into property damage
Acting is a strange profession, really, because it takes so much to embody another person, only to then have to let them go. It is surely really tough when the character you play is someone who experiences a difficult life; even though they’re not real, they suddenly become so. They might as well be.
Nicole Kidman hasn’t shied away from playing challenging roles over the years, but she admits that it takes its toll on her at times. It has to – if you’re walking away from a character who has suffered without feeling some level of suffering, too, have you really portrayed the character authentically?
There’s a difference between simply tapping into your character’s emotions and method acting, though, because the latter takes it to the extreme, allowing real life and fantasy to blur. What’s real and what’s not? It’s suddenly not so clear.
Kidman has never been a method actor like Daniel Day-Lewis, but she has taken her understanding of her characters to intense places in the past, although not consciously. Rather, it was the experience of playing such an emotionally-charged character that once got the better of her, resulting in the actor smashing a window – something she’d never normally do.
This occurred when she was playing Celeste in Big Little Lies, a character who faces physical abuse at the hands of her husband, Perry. The couple have an unusual relationship – one that looks perfect on the outside with two twin boys and a great big home. They’re rich and privileged, but behind closed doors, Celeste and Perry fight, and more often than not, the abuse that Perry incites turns into a bizarre sexual game.
Some of the scenes between the pair are incredibly intense, and it seems like playing Celeste brought something out of Kidman, something that she didn’t even know she possessed. Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, she revealed, “I threw a rock because [the door] was locked and I couldn’t get in. I’d never done that in my life. I obviously [had a lot] pent up. I broke the whole thing. It cost a fortune.”
She continued, “And then I went back the next day and I said to Alexander [Skarsgard] and Jean-Marc [Vallée], ‘I threw a rock through the window,’ and they were like, ‘Whoa …’ I said, ‘I was kind of pissed off.’” Clearly, the pressure of playing such a psychologically challenging character built up, and she didn’t have time to step back and separate her own emotions from those of Celeste.
“But there’s a way in which we operate where the show must go on, and so you just keep going — you show up and you do it and do it and do it and do it. And a lot of times, it’s six months of 12-, 14-hour days and there really isn’t the time to go, ‘I need to take care of myself,’” she said.
But of course, there comes a moment when you realise that you’ve got to step back and assess how a role is affecting you, and in the end, Kidman knew there was only one solution – she had to film a comedy. “I went and did a comedy because I went crazy with my own psychology. I was like, ‘This is unhealthy,’” she said. “it’s very tough on the psyche.”
