‘I can hear my mum, feel her, and there are moments when I cry out in my heart’

My mother may not be here in her physical form, but she’s still very much here. She’s still there inside me. I hear her speaking through my sister Antonia. I hear her speaking through my daughters, I hear her speaking through my nieces and nephews. She had such a huge impact on all of our lives.

It’s a loss, but when I dig deep, and I go, “where is she?” She’s still here. I can hear her, feel her, and there are moments when I cry out in my heart. But that’s the pain of life and the pain of love and the pain of a very, very close relationship. It’s also the beauty of it because we were so attached, all of us, the whole family.

Nicole Kidman and her mum Janelle at the 2018 AACTA Awards in Sydney. Credit: Getty

The memory that most seems to capture her essence is resilience. The “get up, and get on with it”. The “pull yourself together”. The “one foot in front of the other, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how bad it gets, you keep moving forward”. And she would say, “you’re a role model now, for your children, you must be that”.

The other thing I feel strongly is her sacrifice for us; that’s a very emotional thing for me because the idea of her sacrificing a huge amount of her life for us, and for our dreams, and for my father’s, has become more resonant as she’s passed. Things that she said now make sense, all the little bits of wisdom.

I desperately still wish she was there because the loss of that voice and guidance is hard. Life is a journey, and the mother [figure], the guide through that, is such a huge part of it.

Mum was incredibly smart. She was always the smartest person in the room. She wasn’t scared to speak her mind. She had sort of a decorum about her, and a modesty. Likewise, she had this strange rebel streak, yet she was quite traditional.

Mum was in a traditional marriage. My father [psychologist Antony Kidman, who died in 2014] had the powerful career in the marriage. Mum supported him in a huge way and supported us. She was always top of her class, top of the school. She was bright, she wasn’t frightened. And she was a feminist when that was really, really prevalent in Australia in the 70s.

Nicole and her mum in 2020. “I desperately still wish she was there because the loss of that voice and guidance is hard.”Credit: Instagram

But then she would play bridge, crochet, knit, and make a great Christmas cake. My husband Keith would come home going, “has she made the Christmas cake?” Because she could make that classic Australian Christmas cake, wrapped in tinfoil, that I love. She could play the piano beautifully, and she could speak French. She could paint.

Mum was a member of the NSW Art Gallery. Her present to me on my birthday was a membership. We would go to the opera together. She was very classically trained and educated. She made me study Latin at school. She could challenge you on anything. And she was inquisitive, curious.

I would call her at night, and because of the time difference, I could have two-hour conversations with her. I would be up struggling with insomnia. Towards the end of her life, she wasn’t mobile, really, so she could talk, and she really had no loss of her mental faculties at all. She knew everything going on around the world.

She also often said, “if I could take your pain away, I would”. That was her line, “if I could absorb all that pain for you”. At different times in all of our lives, she was like, “please, I will absorb it. I’ll take it. I can’t, but I can hold your hand or be here on the end of the phone listening”.

Growing up, we were given a very stable, loving household. It was neither without its fractious moments nor without its fights, but not a lot of secrets. There wasn’t a lot swept under the carpet. It was a very vocal family, so people felt comfortable being able to cry, and to express, and to hold each other. There was a lot of emotion in the family, but the family held tight through the storms and through the good and the bad, which is what you want in a family.

Nicole Kidman (right), with (from left) husband Keith Urban, their daughters Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret and niece Sybella Hawley.Credit: FilmMagic

There were many different political beliefs. There was always sort of a mishmash. My grandmother Joyce loved rugby league and would take me to the football, and my mother would say, “I want to take you to the ballet, we’re going to the opera, we’re not watching football”. But as a result, I love football. And, anyway, my mother loved cricket.

In my father, I just saw a man who loved my mother, which was the most beautiful thing to grow up watching. He was so loving to her and devoted to her and was such a good man. They married very young and made it to 50 years, which is a feat.

It says something about their relationship. I’m very, very fortunate to have created this coming-up-to-20 year marriage [with Keith Urban]. That’s very much because of my parents. They had great fun together, but they had a strong intellectual friendship as well.

At the same time, both my sister Antonia and I had deeply strong individual relationships with both of them, very defined. My mother always thought that my father would outlive her. So I think the shock of him not being there for the last 10 years of her life was very, very hard.

It feels like I am still in the midst of [my grief]. It fluctuates. It comes and goes. I also have two teen-aged daughters, one who is about to be 17 [Sunday Rose] and one who is 14 [Faith Margaret]. So there is the loss of my mother, and [the growing world of] my teen daughters, and they’ve collided.

It’s an awakening in a way. It’s a shedding, and it’s a grounding for what the future will bring so that I can be the strength in the family, now that she’s not feeding me that strength.

When you say, what is an Australian mother? I think there’s a pragmatism there, there’s a logic, there’s a resilience, there’s a warmth, there’s a humour, and there’s a love of life. And I would say that, deeply, my mother loved life with an incredibly sharp sense of humour.

Her last words to me were, “take care of yourself, Nicki”. I did not know they were going to be her last words.

The tears still come. Huge raindrop tears, too. And you go, “are they going to stop? When do they stop?” I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t know when they’ll ever stop. But I love that weird thing where you hold the hand of somebody who was also incredibly close to their mother, and you can almost feel the connection, it’s so powerful.

We’re going to approach Mother’s Day simply. Wake up in the morning, spend time with my family, but not just my family, all the people I call my mothers now. There are other people in my life who take on that mother figure for me. So I look for it, and I provide it. Because we are all still in need of mothering.

Nicole Kidman spoke to Michael Idato.