Nicole Kidman, star of Before I Go To Sleep, opens up on her father Antony Kidman’s death
IN one of her first interviews since the death of her father, Nicole Kidman says she is still struggling to come to terms with his loss.
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HER father died unexpectedly just four weeks ago, and Nicole Kidman confesses she’s not ready to go back to work.
But she’s drawn on her memories of her father Antony to push ahead with promoting her latest movie, Before I Go to Sleep.
“It’s been awful. I think we are all still navigating through huge loss and grief right now, my Mum, my sister and I. It’s rough,” the Oscar-winning actress says on the phone from her home in Nashville.
The timing Before I Go To Sleep, an old school psychological thriller in which Kidman stars opposite Colin Firth, is clearly far from ideal.
TRAGIC: Nicole Kidman’s father Dr Antony Kidman dies
“It’s still too soon for me, but I guess it’s going to feel like that for a long time,’’ she says
“You have just got to push on. My Dad, in a weird way, would have … that’s always what he taught us, you just have to put one foot in front of the other. That’s part of it.”
By part of it, Kidman is presumably referring to the recovery process.
Her family has always been very close.
Following the breakup of Kidman’s marriage to Tom Cruise, Antony and Janelle supported her on the red carpet of the 2002 Golden Globes, where she was nominated for best dramatic actress for The Others and won for best comedy or musical actress for Moulin Rouge!
And during the course of this interview, the actress recalls the night she screened an early rough cut of passion project Rabbit Hole, for which she eventually earned her third Oscar nomination, to Janelle and Antony for their feedback.
“Mum and Dad loved that film. That really helped me finish it, because at that point, it still didn’t have a distributor.”
Kidman travelled to Seoul last week with husband Keith Urban for the launch of a new diamond ladies’ watch by Omega, for which she is a brand ambassador.
In her first official appearance since her father’s death, the 47-year-old actress chose to wear black.
She says she is grateful that there are no major film projects on the immediate horizon.
“Right now, I am not working, thank God. The work work of showing up on set. I am doing two weeks in November, but that’s it. I just need that time right now.”
The project in question is Michael Grandage’s literary drama, Genius, in which Kidman stars opposite Firth, Guy Pearce, Jude Law and Laura Linney.
It will be her third collaboration in two years with Firth, whom she starred opposite in The Railway Man (2013). They were working together on a fourth project — Paddington — until Firth amicably parted ways with the filmmakers when everybody agreed that his voice was wrong for the much-loved Peruvian bear.
“A conscious uncoupling I think he called it,’’ laughs Kidman.
“I just did a couple of days’ rehearsal with Colin which was really nice. He’s such a life force and he has got such great humour. It was just lovely to be around him again.”
The prolificacy of the pair’s screen collaborations, says Kidman, has more to do with a common creative sensibility than any kind of blossoming Bogey and Bacall-style screen partnership, especially since both of them are married to other people in real life (Keith Urban and Livia Giuggioli respectively.)
“It’s not through going, Oh, I want to work with you again and again. It’s more like we seem to have the same tastes at the moment,’’ says Kidman.
Tastes, it must be said, that tend towards the more challenging spectrum of human experience (Paddington notwithstanding).
In The Railway Man, which was based on a true story, Kidman’s character marries a man so deeply traumatised by his experiences as a POW on the Thai-Burma Railway, he is unable to relate to her emotionally.
Directed by Brighton Rock’s Rowan Joffe, Before I Go To Sleep explores a Memento-style scenario in which Kidman’s character suffers from anterograde amnesia as a result of a car accident.
Every morning she wakes up without any knowledge of who she is, or what has gone before.
Without giving too much away, Colin Firth’s doting husband is not necessarily what he seems.
And even Mark Strong’s sympathetic psychiatrist exhibits a dangerous lack of professional boundaries.
“With roles, I like to be in a place of discomfort,’’ Kidman told her friend Jennifer Aniston in a 2011 interview for Harper’s Bazaar.
“I do my best work in the most complicated roles. I don’t have the capacity to be lighter, and I so wish I did.”
Off screen, however, many of her colleagues are surprised to discover how funny she is.
Robert Pattinson, who plays Lawrence of Arabia to Kidman’s trailblazing Gertrude Belle in Werner Herzog’s upcoming biopic Queen of the Desert, lists himself among them.
”I thought she was great. Supercool. And completely not what I expected.
“I guess in her movies she is quite untouchable. I was only in Morocco for 10 days but I had lots of fun with her. She is really funny. And super accessible.”
For her part, Kidman reveals that her home viewing includes Dancing With the Stars.
But she admits that she spends the majority of her spare time reading — fiction, biography, poetry and scripts.
“I just went through my bedside table and I have something like 40 books still stacked up next to it. I get lost in characters. I get lost in stories and ideas. I have done ever since I was a child.”
As any voracious reader will tell you, fiction can also provide a welcome respite when the real world is just too bruising.
There must have been times, particularly around the critical drubbing she copped for Australia and more recently, with Grace of Monaco, when Kidman thought about giving up altogether.
She said as much on the release of Baz Luhrman’s Outback epic in November 2008.
“I have to say I’m not that interested in making films any more,” she told journalists at the time.
“I know I’m not meant to say that, but that’s where it is for me now. I’m in a place in my life where I’ve had some great opportunities. And I may just choose to have some more children.’
Kidman had just given birth to Sunday Rose, now 6. She and Urban went on to have another daughter, Faith, via surrogacy, in 2001
“After I had had Sunday I was like: well, I am done,’’ says Kidman.
“But both my mother and Keith were like ... hmmm, I don’t think so.”
The pair, she says, counselled her to scale back her work rather than throw in the towel altogether.
And since then, the actress has been averaging two projects a year, often smaller in scale and more independently-minded.
“I looked for other avenues to explore and that’s where the producing came in.”
The latest film to come out of Kidmans’ production company, Blossom Films, is the Jason Bateman-directed drama The Family Fang, in which she plays his sister.
Five months after Grace of Monaco opened the Cannes Film Festival, Kidman has managed to distance herself somewhat from the critical backlash that surrounded it. (Old friend Naomi Watts suffered similarly scathing reviews for her performance as Princes Di.)
“Grace Kelly was really, really special and I get it. If I didn’t pull that off, I didn’t pull it off,’’ says Kidman.
“If it didn’t work, I have to go: okay, it didn’t work.
“It’s hard, of course. But at the same time, I did my best. The very best I could do.
“If I hadn’t tried, if I had been nonchalant, then I would be really upset at myself. I would have been like, well, I really should give up now.
“But I don’t know anybody who doesn’t fall over.”
And as we all know, the best way to get over a tumble is to get straight back on the horse.
After Before I Go To Sleep, Kidman has two more films lined up for release — Queen of the Desert and new Australian thriller Strangerland, with Joseph Fiennes and Hugo Weaving.
She and Reese Witherspoon recently bought the rights to Sydney writer Liane Moriarty’s New York Times bestseller Big Little Lies with the intention of developing it for themselves.
She is also trying her hand as a writer.
“I have always kept a journal. In terms of screenplays, I have nothing that is worthy yet. But I am certainly formulating things,’’ she says.
“I hope to be doing this when I am 80.”
Before I Go To Sleep opens on Thursday.
Originally published as Nicole Kidman, star of Before I Go To Sleep, opens up on her father Antony Kidman’s death
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