AS Nicole Kidman takes on the most explicit film role of her career, showbiz expert Nicole Lampert reveals how the 57-year-old actress is making middle-age sexier than ever.
It wasn’t so long ago that Nicole Kidman helped make middle-aged women the most fashionable thing on television, when Big Little Lies – which she starred in and co-produced with Reese Witherspoon – became a massive hit.
Now, the star – who was bullied at school for her 5ft 11in frame and pale skin – is also leading the charge to make middle-age sexier than ever.
First up, there was that sizzling sex scene with Liev Schreiber – the ex-husband of her best pal, actress Naomi Watts – in Netflix’s The Perfect Couple, which also drew fevered speculation on what cosmetic work she may have had done (More on that later…).
And in January comes one of Nicole’s wildest career challenges to date, with erotic thriller Babygirl.
In it, the 57 year old stars as a happily married but sexually parched woman, who starts up an S&M relationship with a young man who works for her.
It won a seven-minute standing ovation at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where she scooped the Best Actress award, and is now generating substantial Oscars buzz.
But Nicole admits to some trepidation about the world seeing her most explicit film to date.
“It’s like, golly, I’m doing this and it’s now going to be seen by the world. That’s a very weird feeling,” she told Vanity Fair in August.
“This is something you do and hide in your home videos.
“It is not a thing that normally is going to be seen by the world.”
She added of making the film: “I felt very exposed as an actor, as a woman, as a human being.”
The star has never shied away from sex scenes, though.
From 1999’s widely panned Eyes Wide Shut – which briefly put a kibosh on her ambitions, as well as her marriage to Tom Cruise – to 2017’s The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, she has already trodden where few A-listers have dared to step before.
But this is different.
As well as the fact she’s now at an age the film industry does not typically equate with eroticism, Babygirl shows the woman in charge.
Nicole’s also said that having a female director, Halina Reijn, helped her work “with abandonment”.
“It left me ragged,” she recalled.
“At some point I was like: ‘I don’t want to be touched.
“I don’t want to do this any more.’
“But at the same time, I was compelled to do it.”
It is quite a step from when Nicole was an awkward, geeky child growing up in Sydney, spending her time hiding from the sun by reading Russian novels in her bedroom.
But it is also typical that she should take the role very seriously.
There is nothing Nicole loves more, she has said, than people telling her how her work has made a difference to them: “Those moments, they’re really deep – from a stranger who feels like they know you, love you, are part of you because of your work.”
It’s an innate seriousness that Nicole herself acknowledges, telling Harper’s Bazaar in 2022: “My mother says that I was born intense.
“I have always felt things really deeply.”
It is perhaps why she, too, is publicly protected by those around her.
One film contact, who was working on a show with the actress, was apparently surprised to be asked to sign a form agreeing not to talk to Nicole unless she spoke first, and not to look her in the eye.
While Nicole has had deals with fashion companies, there’s no brand image for her, or much social media – only work.
As I know from experience, in interviews she gives an impression of being open, but is hard to read.
Talk to her at parties and she’s polite, but never gives much away.
She’s never been the type to get drunk at showbiz bashes, or be caught having a passionate row in the street.
Even her high-profile split in 2001, after 11 years with first husband Tom Cruise, one of the best-known actors in history, remains mysterious.
She’s an old-fashioned enigma who pours her passion into her work – and it makes her one of the most unconventional and exciting actresses around. And one of the busiest.
Those moments, they’re really deep – from a stranger who feels like they know you, love you, are part of you because of your work
Nicole Kidman
“Nicole never seems to stop working,” says respected Australian entertainment commentator Peter Ford, who has been chronicling Nicole’s career since it started.
“She’s pretty much admitted she’s driven and finds it hard to say no to projects.
“It’s a work ethic she’s inherited from her parents, further during those years post-Tom when she wasn’t hot.
“She knows what it’s like when the phone isn’t ringing.
“She also knows the power and creative freedom she has now by generating her own projects or being attached as an executive producer.”
While Peter worries that some of her TV projects are beginning to look a little samey, repeatedly playing upper-middle class American women dealing with a crisis, he says it is in her film work that she is being more experimental than ever.
“The TV series she’s churning out are always entertaining, but I doubt anyone would consider them to be ground-breaking or even especially challenging her abilities,” he says.
“But her choices in movie roles are diverse and risky.”
Acting was perhaps a surprising choice for Nicole, the daughter of a socially conscious nursing instructor and clinical psychologist.
But actors often fall into two contradictory camps: those who aren’t comfortable in their own skin and prefer to put on the mantle of someone else, and those who are natural show-offs. Nicole is certainly the former.
She told one podcast that she’d spent most of her childhood wishing she was 5ft 2in and curvy.
She was shy and had a stutter, admitting: “I still regress into that shyness,” yet had her first professional role on stage at the age of 14 after watching The Wizard Of Oz.
“You feel like a little girl who’s being given the chance to step into this fantasy world,” she once said of acting.
Her first film was the Australian Bush Christmas in 1983 and her star wattage led her to TV series Five Mile Creek.
As her roles grew, Nicole started to win acclaim in Australia and in 1989 had her first Hollywood hit with Dead Calm.
However, it was Days Of Thunder – and the ensuing romance with leading man Tom Cruise – that was to make her a worldwide name.
The pair married and adopted two children, Connor, now 29, and Bella, 31.
It remains a source of pain that when they split in 2001, the kids chose to stay with their dad, raised in the Church of Scientology.
“Motherhood is about the journey,” Nicole once said.
“There are going to be incredible peaks and valleys, whether you are an adopting mother or a birth mother.
“What a child needs is love.”
Motherhood is about the journey. There are going to be incredible peaks and valleys, whether you are an adopting mother or a birth mother. What a child needs is love
Nicole Kidman
According to actress and former Scientologist Leah Remini, Nicole was seen as a “suppressive person” by the movement, which bans contact with people who have left the church.
In her memoir, Leah recalled being with Connor and Bella, who now lives in England, and asking if they’d seen their mum recently.
“Not if I have a choice,” Bella replied, according to the book.
“Our mum is a f**king SP [suppressive person].”
When Nicole won her first (and so far only) Oscar in 2003 for her role as Virginia Woolf in The Hours, her professional peak hit as her private life was falling apart.
While the 2002 film was critically acclaimed, she was mocked for the prosthetic nose she wore for the role.
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For some years, as she went from independent movie to independent movie – most of which failed to make a dent in the box office – it felt like, while she’d never be out of a job, perhaps her best work was behind her.
Then, in 2010, Nicole founded her own production company, Blossom Films, to create vehicles for actresses her age, saying there was a “dearth of roles” for women.
She said: “At a certain age, it’s like, that’s it, you know?”
Big Little Lies, made with actress and producer Reese Witherspoon, created a trend for stories that put women and their lives at the centre of a story – something that was previously very rare.
“Where was the story about these women and what they were going through? There wasn’t one,” Nicole said soon after it became clear the 2017 series – for which she netted Emmys for her acting and as executive producer – was going to be a huge hit.
She has 12 producing credits to her name now, and when asked how she juggles her workload, she admitted the secret was to have no social life at all.
“I have my work, I have my family, I have my own inner landscape that I explore. I choose that probably more than I choose to be out partying,” she said.
Her personal life keeps her content, even if it is uprooted, as both Nicole and her musician husband Keith Urban, 56, travel a lot for work.
They met in 2005 at the G’Day USA Gala, where she had to approach him, as he was intimidated – and they married the following year.
Home is a ranch in Memphis, where they live with daughters Sunday Rose, 16, and Faith, 13.
Peter says: “I can’t imagine they are at home together that much, yet they remain a very devoted couple and she is a brilliant mum.”
They are an active part of the community, with Nicole taking an interest in a local cancer centre, as her beloved mum had the disease when she was a child.
“I like being part of something not about my work, not about who I am, none of that. Just a citizen who’s in the world,” she said.
Her mother Janelle – who she called “my mentor, my guide and my nurturer” died aged 84 last month, just as Nicole arrived in Venice to pick up the Best Actress award for Babygirl.
The loss presents a new challenge for the star, who relied heavily on her mum – even reading lines with her.
But Nicole has often talked about how Janelle “carved her own path” – and wanted her daughters to do the same.
Nicole certainly has: still breaking barriers as she heads towards her 60s, and forging a path for those who follow her.
Plastic surgeon Dr Paul Banwell, who runs The Banwell Clinic, says: “Naturally, Nicole would have lost collagen and fat in her face, due to ageing.
“I imagine she’s had Botox in her forehead, around her eyes and on the ‘bunny lines’, as it’s where wrinkles are most likely to appear.
Mr Reza Nassab, consultant plastic surgeon at CLNQ says: “When Nicole was younger, she appeared to have a more rounded and slightly wider nose.
“More recently, it seems slimmer and more refined, especially at the tip, which could suggest subtle rhinoplasty.
“Her skin still looks smooth and youthful, which could be due to a facelift to maintain tightness in her jawline and minimise sagging that typically comes with ageing.”
