Nicole Kidman receives historic Hollywood honour

Nicole Kidman has been awarded the 49th American Film Institute Life Achievement Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in Hollywood. Kidman is the first Australian actor to receive the honour.

“It’s emotional for me because the idea of looking back at things, really, it’s unusual for me,” Kidman said on the red carpet. “And then people say breathe and enjoy it and feel it and that’s what I’m trying to do, even though it’s not necessarily my instinct to do that.

Nicole Kidman is introduced to the audience during the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award Tribute Gala.Credit: AP Photo/Chris Pizzello

“My instinct is not to accept too many compliments and always downplay, and so I’m trying not to be awkward, and my mum’s always like, just relax, you’re so much better when you just relax,” she said. “It’s the introvert versus this extroverted life.”

The award was presented to Kidman at a gala ceremony at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, the same venue as the Oscars. The guest list included stars Meryl Streep and Reese Witherspoon, and high-profile Australians such as actor Naomi Watts, director John Polson and Kidman’s husband, singer Keith Urban, who all came to pay tribute.

Urban described his first meeting with his future wife as an encounter with someone who had “a truly otherworldly aura about her; I felt like I was meeting a real life-princess. I was nervous to call her. I couldn’t [imagine] this extraordinary woman would ever see anything in a guy like me.”

Urban also paid tribute to Kidman’s tenacity and courage during his battle with addiction. “Barely four months into our marriage my addiction blew our marriage to smithereens,” Urban said. “I’m in rehab for three months with no idea what was going to happen to us, Nic pushed through every negative voice, and 18 years later, here we are.”

Nicole Kidman takes a selfie with a fan before the gala event.Credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

Kidman’s Big Little Lies co-star Meryl Streep later told the audience that director Stanley Kubrick had once described Kidman as a thoroughbred. “Only an Englishman would think that such a vaguely eugenic blueblooded term would be a compliment to an Aussie sheila,” Streep said, dryly.

“Because to me, you have a wild mongrel in you, you’re like a mustang and a workhorse and champion racer all in one,” Streep said to Kidman. “Your list of credits and roles and good deeds in the world will take a normal person three lifetimes to achieve. It’s hard not to envy Nicole, but it’s also impossible not to be in awe of her.”

Though both her parents were absent – Kidman’s mum Janelle is in Sydney, and her dad Tony passed away in 2014 – she said she felt their contribution to her life and the path that led her to the AFI’s highest honour, deeply.

“They are everything,” Kidman said. “My dad would get on a plane if I was desperate and needed support, and this career, this life, is tough, and we all know that. And whatever happened, wherever I was at, he would get on a plane and come see me, and he would be on a call for hours.”

A family affair … Faith Urban, Sunday Rose Urban, Nicole Kidman, Antonia Marran and Craig Marran at the AFI Lifetime Achievement gala.Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

Her mum, she says, had an eye on the big picture. “She was my support, she was coach as well, like in my head and my biggest champion. And she wouldn’t sugar-coat things, which was good because when she gives a compliment, you believe her. Without them, there’s not a chance I would be here.”

Kidman also acknowledged that her teenaged self, the girl who walked onto the set of BMX Bandits back in 1983, would have had no inkling that she was on a path that would lead to Hollywood success, an Oscar, a BAFTA, six Golden Globes and now the AFI Life Achievement Award.

“My thing has always been, I’m a working actor and I love that,” she says. “So I was always like, what’s the next opportunity? What’s the next job? I was trained to work and to learn and to keep growing and to keep exploring. And I love being a part of these [film and television] families. They’re my families.”

Kidman was accompanied by her husband Keith Urban and their children, as well as her sister Antonia Marran, and Antonia’s daughter Lucia Hawley. Kidman’s lifelong best friend, Annette Rechner, the sister of newsreader Peter Overton, was also present. Rechner was accompanied by her son, actor Sam Rechner.

Nicole Kidman and husband Keith Urban arrive at the 49th AFI Lifetime Achievement Award Tribute Gala.Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

Australia’s consul-general in Los Angeles, Tanya Bennett, described the event as a huge moment for Australia. “The first Australian honoured with this award, I think it’s a huge deal,” she said. “Nicole Kidman is such an ambassador for Australians working in film.”

Bennett said the award also highlighted the power of soft diplomacy, as Australia’s international contribution to culture and the arts.

“I think for a country like Australia, having cultural ambassadors who promote the best of the best of what we are, and who we are, is great, and certainly Nicole Kidman shines out and tonight’s achievement really recognises that,” she said.

AFI president Bob Gazzale said Kidman embodied the “glamour and romance of Hollywood past. But she also has the daring and the bravery of one of this art form’s great character actors. She’s a true screen icon, but she’s also a risk-taker. Each performance is something new and something profound.”

Gazzale said Kidman also had the rare power of driving culture forward.

“She’s doing it with her commitment to amplifying the voices of female directors and producers. Nicole has been very specific about what she wishes for us to think about.

The award was first given out in 1973, and it’s intended for artists whose careers have “fundamentally advanced the art of film and whose achievements had been acknowledged by film scholars, critics, their individual peers and the public.”

Gazzale acknowledged that Kidman is the first Australian actor to receive the AFI award. “This art form is a global unifier at a time when needed most,” he said.

In its first decade, AFI Life Achievement Award recipients included actors John Ford, James Cagney and Bette Davis, and director Alfred Hitchcock.

Since then, it has been given to fewer than 50 individuals in the modern history of cinema. The list includes actors Barbara Stanwyck, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Harrison Ford and Sidney Poitier, and directors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and others.

The most recent recipient was actor Julie Andrews in 2022. No award was given out in 2020, 2021 or 2023. One of the qualifying factors is that the recipient’s work “must have withstood the test of time”.