Kidman radically transforms for drama ‘Destroyer’
LONDON: Hollywood star Nicole Kidman undergoes a dramatic makeover for new drama ‘ Destroyer’, playing a tired-looking and worn out police detective with a painful history.
The Oscar winner swaps her blonde locks for a short bob and rugged style to play Erin Bell, a detective whose past continues to haunt her years after infiltrating a criminal gang undercover in an operation with devastating consequences.
“I just felt her and I felt sadness and I felt pain for her,” Kidman said at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday.
“I thought there was a restlessness and a complexity to her anger which I thought I had never seen on screen, particularly in the form of a female.”
The 51-year- old is no stranger to changing her looks for roles, such as when she played Virginia Woolf in ‘ The Hours’, for which she won an Oscar.
Critics have praised her performance in ‘ Destroyer’ and described her appearance as “almost unrecognisable”.
“The way I look and behave in the film is the result of a lot of trauma,” Kidman said. “That’s the beauty of cinema, you use the image, you don’t always have to have the words.”
Director Karyn Kusama described Bell as a “really complicated human” dealing with regret, guilt and shame. A team of hairdressers and makeup artists worked together to transform Kidman’s looks.
“We talked a lot about sun damage and lack of sleep and drinking too much and not eating well and we landed at a very extreme version of all of that lack of self- care,” Kusama said. — Reuters