With a career that has garnered an Academy Award, a BAFTA, two Emmys, three Critics’ Choice Awards, and a staggering six Golden Globes—not to mention the universal critical acclaim and widespread audience adoration—Nicole Kidman can only be heralded among the finest actors of her generation, if not of all time. She began her career in Australia in the early ’80s, with 1983’s Bush Christmas and BMX Bandits marking her first film appearances. Her career now includes over 100 acting credits. While recent years have seen her become a small-screen sensation, with performances in such hits as Big Little Lies and Lioness, it is undoubtedly her achievements in film that have defined the excellence of her career.
The best of Nicole Kidman’s big-screen credentials include everything from innovative genre films to heart-pounding thrillers, mesmerizing musicals, and fantastic family adventures. A striking historical drama that received nine Academy Award nominations and saw Kidman go on to win Best Actress, The Hours is an emotionally overwhelming exploration of womanhood over the course of the past century. In 1923, Virginia Woolf (Kidman) began writing “Mrs. Dalloway” while battling severe depression and living under the ever-watchful eye of her husband. In 1951, troubled housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) finds solace in the novel, while in 2001, Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep) spends a day preparing a celebration for her former lover and best friend who is suffering from AIDS. The film has no qualms about embracing a bleak and depressing tone, but it escapes drudgery through the strength of its performances, with the three leads all imbuing their characters with complexity and humility that personalizes their respective struggles. Even alongside such impeccable co-stars, Kidman remains an arresting standout, and her performance makes The Hours one of the definitive movies of her career.
The story of how the novel “Mrs. Dalloway” affects three generations of women, all of whom, in one way or another, have had to deal with suicide in their lives, is both poignant and impactful. With Yorgos Lanthimos’ signature peculiarity and intensity, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is an immediately impressionable psychological horror that revels in the absurd and the shocking with a maniacal yet artful allure. Steven (Colin Farrell) is a charismatic surgeon who agrees to take the 16-year-old Martin (Barry Keoghan) under his wing, even inviting him to his house to be with his wife, Anna (Kidman), and their two young children. However, when Martin’s violent agenda is revealed, the Murphy family finds themselves in an impossible predicament. Stunningly eccentric not only in its unsettling horror but in its use of black comedy as well, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a viciously hypnotic and profoundly unnerving viewing experience that stands as one of the most disconcerting horror experiences of the 2010s. Kidman, along with Farrell and Keoghan, is typically fantastic, with the performances of all three leads managing to humanize the story’s most outrageous elements while contributing to the absurdity on display in spectacular fashion. Steven is forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart when the behavior of a teenage boy he has taken under his wing turns sinister.
A richly atmospheric and bold haunted house horror, The Others stands as one of the genre’s best films of the early 2000s. The film coasts on Kidman’s powerhouse lead performance and a restrained eeriness to create a memorably creepy viewing. Set in New Jersey in 1945, the devoted religious Grace Stewart (Kidman) moves into a new house with her two young children. However, when unnatural occurrences begin to transpire, Grace grows convinced that the house is haunted. Incorporating several refreshing spins on the genre and delivering an almighty twist, The Others is a clever horror picture that thrives on some sharp direction choices and a commanding story. However, it is undeniably Kidman who defines the film’s brilliance, with her nuanced yet striking performance bringing tremendous weight to the character’s situation while still presenting Grace as a relatable figure stuck in a horrific scenario. In 1945, immediately following the end of the Second World War, a woman who lives with her two photosensitive children on her darkened old family estate in the Channel Islands becomes convinced that the home is haunted.
A rousing biographical drama about a family that swept the awards season and received six Academy Award nominations while becoming a box office success, Lion is as deeply moving as it is poignantly tragic. After being separated from his family in India when he was five, Saroo (Dev Patel) is adopted by an Australian couple and raised in Hobart. Twenty years later, his move to Melbourne to study hotel management prompts him to try to reconnect with the family he was stripped from in India, an ambition fully supported by his adoptive mother, Sue Brierley (Kidman). With incredible storytelling and a litany of outstanding performances, Lion is able to avoid genre clichés to thrive as an emotionally exhausting yet ultimately triumphant testament to the undying nature of familial love. Kidman and Patel are both instrumental in this regard, imbuing their characters with astounding depth and nuance while ensuring the scenes they share are as profoundly powerful as possible.
2016’s Lion is based on a book by Saroo Brierley titled A Long Way Home. Directed by Garth Davis, the movie chronicles a young boy who finds himself lost in a city and must make it home while unable to communicate well with the locals. Despite being critically derided upon release and performing poorly at the box office, Birth has come to be re-evaluated in time, with some proclaiming it to be a creepy masterpiece of modern cinema. Kidman stars as Anna, a widower on the brink of a new marriage a decade after her late husband’s death when she meets a 10-year-old boy who claims to be the reincarnation of her lost love. While Anna is dismissive at first, she gradually comes to believe the child, given his knowledge of her past marriage. Within the twisted, psycho-dramatic veneer of the premise, there resides a powerful, pointed, and creatively raw story about the nature of human connection and the mysterious yet life-altering ways love can impact us. Enchanting and enigmatic, Birth is perhaps the single most misunderstood picture in Kidman’s filmography, and as a result, houses what is potentially the most underrated and overlooked performance of her career.
Few directors in modern cinema are as sensationally stylized as Baz Luhrmann. Moulin Rouge! presents what is perhaps the perfect marriage between an eccentric narrative of romance and adventure with the director’s trademark visual grandeur and excess. The jukebox musical follows Christian (Ewan McGregor), a young writer, as he travels to Paris where he becomes enamored by the Moulin Rouge and its star performer, Satine (Kidman). Operatic in scope, and never ceasing to be a vibrant and intoxicating experience through its violent swings from romance to farce to tragedy, Moulin Rouge! is an awe-inspiring presentation of pure spectacle that thrives off the spontaneity of its story and the sheer commitment of its stars. It received eight Academy Award nominations, including Kidman’s first nomination, and the film went on to win for its art direction and its costume design.
Moulin Rouge! follows Christian, a young writer in Paris, who falls in love with Satine, the star courtesan of the Moulin Rouge cabaret. As they begin a passionate affair, they must hide their love from the jealous Duke, who is funding Satine’s next show. A grueling and gritty historical revenge epic by the ever-intriguing Robert Eggers, The Northman is one of the best action films of the decade thus far. As a child, a young viking prince has his life torn from him when his treacherous uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang) kills his father and takes his mother, Queen Gudrún (Kidman), captive. Years later, Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) sets out to avenge his father and rescue his mother from Fjölnir’s grasp, a conquest that takes him to a small farming village in the remoteness of Iceland. Marrying berserker brutality with Eggers’ technically masterful execution, The Northman is a richly immersive viewing experience that deftly meshes its bloodshed with a winding narrative that refuses to submit to genre formula or simplicity. Even amid such spectacle and an all-star cast including the likes of Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk, and Willem Dafoe, Kidman excels in her supporting part, making a lasting impression in the surprising sequence when she and Amleth are finally reunited.
To Die For is a modern and acidic film-noir black comedy, and it thrives by placing Nicole Kidman at the heart of all the carnage as the phenomenal femme fatale and main character. She plays Suzanne Stone Maretto, a weather girl on local news whose dreams of becoming a national news anchor are unintentionally thwarted by her husband’s contentment with the suburban, middle-class lifestyle. Hatching a vicious scheme, she seduces a lovestruck high school student and convinces him to kill her husband, but the plan quickly goes awry. Wonderfully absurd and wickedly smart, To Die For takes great delight in skewering America’s infatuation with celebrity. Kidman is particularly astounding in this regard, balancing Suzanne’s towering aspirations, venomous vanity, and her reckless stupidity against an underlying vulnerability that, beautifully yet bizarrely, resonates with anyone who has harbored dreams of stardom. It is dark fun aimed directly at the heart of modern American sensationalism, and it has only grown more magnificent over the years.
One of the defining films of its decade and the swan song of Stanley Kubrick’s astonishing career, Eyes Wide Shut is a complex and textured story about sexuality and marriage wearing the glossy veneer of a heightened erotic thriller. It follows Dr. Bill Hartford’s (Tom Cruise) experience after his wife, Alice (Kidman), tells him she fantasized about another man. Becoming obsessed with the need to have a sexual encounter, Bill infiltrates an orgy hosted by a cultish secret society, only to find himself being stalked after he is exposed as an outsider. Imbued with a colorful Christmas aesthetic that almost mockingly underscores the tumultuous romance at the core of the film, Eyes Wide Shut is a blitzing display of Kubrick at his provocative, controversial best. Like so many of Kubrick’s films, it was widely misunderstood upon release. And, like so many of Kubrick’s films, it has come to be revered as a clinical and commanding classic in time. Kidman’s brilliance in her supporting role as Alice only enhances the film’s observations on depersonalized sexual relations and hedonistic obsession in modern America.
A Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre, night-long odyssey after his wife’s admission of unfulfilled longing. Nothing short of a modern icon of pop-culture entertainment, the Paddington movies are a beacon of goodwill and charm, of vibrant fun and eccentricity, that has won over millions of fans all over the world of all ages. It follows the young Peruvian bear, Paddington (Ben Whishaw), as he travels to London, where he is taken in by the Brown family. As he explores the city and aspires to be a productive member of society, he finds himself being hunted by Millicent Clyde (Kidman), a taxidermist who wants to add him to her collection. Among the most charming and sweet-natured films ever made, Paddington endears not only with its titular character’s adorable realization but with its wit, its cheek, and its exuberant sense of adventure as well. While debate may rage as to whether it is the greatest of Nicole Kidman’s movies, few will deny it is her most charming and endlessly rewatchable.
From her groundbreaking performances in The Hours to the enchanting allure of Paddington, Nicole Kidman’s greatest films showcase her unparalleled versatility and talent, leaving an indelible mark on the film industry. As audiences continue to thrill in her cinematic contributions, the legacy of Nicole Kidman offers a testament to the beauty of storytelling in cinema.
