Formidable Nicole’s the Queen of Cannes
NICOLE KIDMAN kicked off her stilettos and announced she was going for a paddle to soothe her sore feet.
‘Keith will bring me in if I fall over,’ she giggled, as she stood up, adjusted her ‘ Swan Lake wedding dress’ designer gown and sashayed from the bright lights of the Cannes party being held for Yorgos Lanthimos’s stunning The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (in which Nicole stars with Colin Farrell), down to the dark shoreline.
Keith (Kidman’s husband Keith Urban) took his cue and followed close behind, as did this reporter. ‘ Come and join me!’ the Oscar-winning star called.
‘Take your shoes and socks off,’ she added; too late, as I stumbled down a sandbank in my black-tie finest.
Urban helped me up. ‘Welcome to my life,’ he said, wryly. ‘It’s like this all the time. Never dull. We prune roses at midnight in Nashville.’
The home of country music is also home for the couple and their two daughters, Faith and Sunday Rose: somewhere they can let their hair down.
‘We’re away from red carpets,’ Urban told me. ‘We can just be us. You know, husband and wife; mum and dad.’
The next afternoon, when I saw Nicole again — on the rooftop of the Palais film festival venue, for an interview — she laughed about the episode (‘hilarious!’). ‘I wanted to feel the sand beneath my feet and feel that water!’
The Lanthimos picture is one of four projects Kidman has at this year’s 70th Cannes Film Festival. Her performance as Anna — a doctor married to a heart surgeon (Farrell) and a mother of two — has won acclaim from critics. And the movie, about a young man (Dublin-born Barry Keoghan) who disrupts their seemingly perfect lives, is hypnotic.
SHE told me she read the script, and then texted the Greek-born director to say: ‘I’m in!’ Was she fazed by the full- on nudity? Or the intensity of some scenes?
‘I knew what the script was,’ she said. ‘And when you’re working with a strong director, who creates his own world — and you agree to enter that world — then you get on and do it.’
The result is that Lanthimos’s heartstopping film, shot mainly on locations in Cincinnati (with backing from Film4), is an exhilarating watch. And I have seen it twice.
In sharp contrast, Kidman plays a punk goddess in How To Talk To Girls At Parties, which had its premiere in just ahead of Sacred Deer, last Sunday.
The actress also popped up in the first two episodes of Jane Campion’s new series of Top Of The Lake: China Girl ( a See Saw Productions and BBC co-production), which was unveiled at the Festival.
And then, on Wednesday night, she was back again: playing the principal of a private girls school in Sofia Coppola’s Civil War-set film Beguiled, which again stars Colin Farrell. Marvellously done, it presents a facade of Southern beauty and genteel manners, concealing undercurrents of desire and darkness.
In Beguiled, as well as Sacred Deer, Nicole told me she drew on the experiences of watching her mother Janelle, a nursing executive, at work.
‘All through my childhood I’d go to the hospital with my mum,’ she said. ‘In Sacred Deer they said: “Oh, we need to teach you how to apply a tube to a patient,” and I said: “I know how to do that!”
‘I wasn’t boasting. I had watched Mum do it for years.’ Similarly, her first-aid experience came in handy when it came to patching up Farrell’s character’s broken leg in Beguiled. ‘Doctor Kidman!’ I joked. ‘I wish!’ she retorted. ‘It’s only pretend in the movies. Mum did it all for real.’
Her mother is never far from her thoughts. While filming Beguiled, she had to fly to Australia where the 77-year-old was in hospital; though she’s now thankfully on the mend. ‘Kicking and smiling and fighting,’ Nicole joked.
It’s a busy time for the family. Urban has headed back to the U.S. and tomorrow will perform at a concert to celebrate Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 motor race.
After a brief pitstop in Nashville,
nicole will head back to Australia, where her mum’s throwing her a 50th birthday party. ‘It’s a few weeks early, but Mum wanted to do something,’ she told me. It’ll be very special. not me turning 50! Just the fact that my mum is there to do this.’
she said she feels more comfortable and relaxed about love, life and work now than she did at the start of her career, 30 years ago — which is about how long we’ve known each other.
she puts that down to being happily married and living with her girls. ‘It makes you able to go out and tackle everything.’
her recent Tv success with Big Little Lies is a case in point.
In the HBO mini-series, she played celeste, a married mother of twin boys who, on the face of it, seems to have it all.
EXCEPT she doesn’t. celeste is the victim of domestic abuse. ‘People come over to me in restaurants and it’s the most chilling thing to hear. The women whisper in my ear: “I am celeste,” she says. ‘That’s all they say. And I hold their hands and urge them to do something.’
she developed the programme with her co-star reese Witherspoon and says they plan to work together again. ‘You can’t sit around waiting for an email or a phone call offering you work! You have to make your own opportunities.
‘And if you don’t want to play the same old same old, then you do something about it.’
The actress has several projects in the pipeline, but first, after a summer break, she’ll indulge in something a bit lighter: playing Queen Atlanta in Aquaman, which is being made by her friend James Wan.
Maintaining friendships with directors she has worked with over the years is important to her.
nicole also confirmed she will take the play Photograph 51 to Broadway as soon as she and director Michael Grandage get a clear run in their diaries. she won an evening standard best actress honour when she starred in the show in London two years ago.
so how does it feel to be the Queen of cannes, I asked — reminding her that, 20 years ago, I predicted she’d be working more in her 50th year than in her 30th?
‘ I don’t feel like the Queen of cannes,’ she said. ‘I’m just a girl who got her feet wet at a party . . . I feel as if I’m only just beginning.’