Why Nicole Kidman belongs in the pantheon of great actresses
Nicole Kidman.
The name conjures many images and associations: the tumble of red curls and pert, blue-eyed face of the star as a newcomer to the screen; the marriage to Tom Cruise and ensuing escape from Scientology; the lithe physique and dewy features that she wears easily to this day. But one phrase we often forget to attach is “great actress.”
Perhaps because of her demeanor of self-effacing, even demure, modesty, it’s been easy to underestimate Kidman over the course of a career that now spans three decades. But this month has offered a reminder of why we should prize an actress who has fashioned one of the more fascinating careers in a business notorious for pigeonholing its starlets early, keeping them boxed in and discarding them when their physical attributes show signs of sagging, bagging or otherwise naturally evolving.
Kidman largely has escaped that trap, as anyone who watched the recent HBO series “Big Little Lies” can attest. The stylish, compulsively engrossing thriller/domestic melodrama turned out to be a sleeper “peak TV” hit largely on the strength of its ensemble cast, which included Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, Shailene Woodley and Kidman, who played the abused wife of a prosperous executive.
Kidman – who co-produced with Witherspoon – was a standout in the series, her portrayal of a woman fighting for her own physical and psychic survival radiating shame, ambivalence, glazed confusion, determination and barely perceptible ripples of latent power. Never showy or gratuitous, it was a performance as delicate and fine-grained as the porcelain that her doll-like character, Celeste, sometimes seemed to be made of.
No sooner had Kidman delivered a powerhouse with “Big Little Lies” than she whipsawed her audience into another direction entirely: In “Queen of the Desert,” which opened Friday, she portrays the storied explorer, writer and photographer Gertrude Bell, a contemporary of T.E. Lawrence who traveled the Arabian Peninsula in the early 20th century and helped redraw the region’s national boundaries after World War I.
Written and directed by Werner Herzog with an uncharacteristically blunt and stodgily sentimental hand, “Queen of the Desert” isn’t a great film. In fact, it’s often a very bad one, its strenuous efforts to be the female version of “Lawrence of Arabia” notwithstanding. But none of its faults lies with Kidman, who dominates the screen in nearly every shot with regal composure and restraint.
This is a familiar dynamic in Kidman’s filmography: She’s made some famous duds, most recently the overbaked historical pseudo-epic “Australia,” the deliciously campy “The Paperboy” and the ill-advised Grace Kelly biopic “Grace of Monaco.” But even in her worst movies, Kidman is never the problem; her performances rise above whatever dreck they’re in, as if her supreme self-possession as a performer inoculated her against the toxic material with which she was working.
And the bad movies are relatively thin on the ground compared with the myriad triumphs: She won an Oscar for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in “The Hours,” but that was a full seven years after her astonishing portrayal of a fame-hungry TV journalist in “To Die For,” in which she permanently shut up the doubters in a triumphantly crafty, satirical turn.
One need only consider Kidman’s vanity-free supporting appearance in last year’s “Lion,” alight quickly on “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Others” and go all the way back to her breakout roles in “Dead Calm” and “Days of Thunder” to appreciate the rigor and expressive range of an actress who easily can hold her own with the Meryl Streeps, Viola Davises and Cate Blanchetts of the world but is rarely mentioned in their company.
It’s nothing new for actresses to search out envelopes to push, edges to explore or boundaries to transgress in the name of publicity, “stretching” or simply staying relevant. In Kidman’s case, her finest performance might be a cumulative one, far outstripping the workaday job of taking a character from the page to the stage.
Her genius is as strategic as it is technical, in how she’s consistently leveraged stardom on behalf of growth, taste and sophistication. With her preternatural technical and physical gifts, she easily could have been sleepwalking through the past 30 years. Instead, she’s chosen to keep her eyes wide open.
Nicole Kidman in HBO’s “Big Little Lies.” MUST CREDIT: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle, HBO
Nicole Kidman in “Lion.” MUST CREDIT: The Weinstein Company
Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell and Damian Lewis as Charles Doughty-Wylie in “Queen of the Desert.” MUST CREDIT: Lena Herzog, IFC Films
Nicole Kidman in HBO’s “Big Little Lies.” MUST CREDIT: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle, HBO
Nicole Kidman in “Lion.” MUST CREDIT: The Weinstein Company
Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell and Damian Lewis as Charles Doughty-Wylie in “Queen of the Desert.” MUST CREDIT: Lena Herzog, IFC Films