Kidman, Nicole

▪ Australian actress

born June 20, 1967, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.

      American-born Australian actress known for her considerable range and versatility as well as for her glamorous looks and cool demeanour.

      Born in Honolulu to Australian parents, Kidman was raised in Sydney and launched her acting career as a teenager. She appeared in made-for-television films and miniseries during her adolescence and debuted as a lead actress in the thriller Dead Calm (1989). The offer of a role in Days of Thunder (1990) drew her to the United States, and while working on that film, she began a relationship with costar Tom Cruise (Cruise, Tom); the two were married in 1990 (divorced 2001). Over the next decade, Kidman appeared in a dozen films. Her roles included a gangster-loving socialite in Billy Bathgate (1991), an aspiring television journalist in the black comedy To Die For (1995), and an American living in Europe during the 1800s in the screen adaptation of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1996). In 1998 Kidman made her stage debut in London, playing five different roles in Sir David Hare's The Blue Room, the well-received series of vignettes based on Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde. In early 1999 she transferred with the play to New York City for her Broadway debut. That year also saw the release of Eyes Wide Shut, the final film by director Stanley Kubrick (Kubrick, Stanley). Although billed as a steamy romance featuring real-life couple Kidman and Cruise, it bowed to mixed reviews and disappointing box-office numbers.

      Kidman quickly rebounded, however, with a series of diverse roles that highlighted the range of her talent. In the Baz Luhrmann musical fantasy Moulin Rouge! (2001), she starred as a dying courtesan, and the performance earned Kidman her first Academy Award nomination. In 2001 she also appeared in The Others, an atmospheric horror film, and the dark comedy Birthday Girl, in which she played a Russian mail-order bride. Two years later she earned an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002), an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham. A string of critical successes followed, including Dogville (2003), The Human Stain (2003), Cold Mountain (2003), and Margot at the Wedding (2007). In 2007 Kidman starred as the coolly menacing Mrs. Coulter in The Golden Compass, an adaptation of Philip Pullman's controversial fantasy novel. She reteamed with Luhrmann for the romantic drama Australia (2008), playing a prim Englishwoman who arrives in Australia just after World War II to defend land she has inherited.

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