C’mon Australia, let’s give Nicole the love she deserves

For nearly 20 years Keith Urban has known what Australia should have long ago recognised: Nicole Kidman is a very big deal. Instead, it took the American Film Institute to honour her.

Nicole Kidman accepts her AFI Lifetime Achievement Award. Picture: Getty Images

A year ago I was in a hotel gym on the Gold Coast when I spotted Keith Urban lifting weights nearby.

I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to talk to him. But I have a strict policy with celebrities not to approach them unless they’re in a work setting.

In any case, Keith was on Facetime with his personal trainer (sorry, ever the journo) and so it was inappropriate to interrupt.

You see, for many years now there’s something I’ve wanted to say to Keith.

I wanted to thank him for his song, Without You.

Keith Urban and honoree Nicole Kidman attend the 49th Annual AFI Life Achievement Award honouring Kidman. Picture: Getty Images for Warner Bros. Discovery)

It’s a love song. It’s about hope, about two people finding each other, about family.

It chronicles his life with Nicole and it has one key message: that nothing in his life means anything without her.

For nearly 20 years Keith has known what this country should have long ago recognised: that Nicole is not only the greatest actor this nation has ever produced but a woman of such talent, heart and fortitude that it’s remiss that she’s never been named Australian of the Year.

Instead, it took the American Film Institute to last Sunday honour her with a lifetime achievement award.

She was obviously thrilled and for the first time ever allowed her teenage daughters to join her on the red carpet.

Keith was there, obviously, as well as her sister Antonia and a cluster of long-limbed nieces and nephews.

The speeches were effusive and funny and included a hilarious revelation from Meryl Streep about Nicole’s predilection for nude swimming.

But if that glorious night taught us anything it’s that 42 years after she won her first acting role, Nicole Kidman has been grievously overlooked by this country.

Glamour personified: Nicole Kidman on the red carpet. Picture: AFP

For reasons I’ve never understood, she is polarising but that’s no excuse for her not receiving our highest honour, one which has previously gone to actors Paul Hogan and Geoffrey Rush.

Nicole is as captivating as Cate Blanchett. She’s as charming as Margot Robbie and she’s as great an ambassador for Australia as Chris Hemsworth. She’s a team player, champions young talent, laughs at herself constantly and, as I’ve been told, has been known to rustle up bowls of pasta for fellow cast members on set. Yet somehow she falls through the cracks of our national consciousness or, worse, is scorned for everything from her swimming attire to her face.

DEADSET LEGEND

It’s time we saw this 56-year-old star for what she is: a deadset legend.

She’s a child actor who, unlike most, continues to work. She’s frizzy-haired and white skinned in a culture that loves golden and she’s made that difference work. She’s survived and thrived after a relationship with the complicated (and litigious) Tom Cruise when previous actor wives – Katie Holmes, Mimi Rogers – disappeared from public view.

She even referenced him in her acceptance speech on Sunday, noting that while you laugh with some co-stars and cry with others, some you “fall in love with, some of them you marry”.

Only someone who’d loved, lived and learned could wear such an experience so lightly. I hope he messaged to congratulate her.

Nicole has suffered challenge upon challenge: her mother’s breast cancer when she was still a teen; the shock end of her marriage to Tom not long after she endured a miscarriage; the loss of her adopted children to Scientology (she said her role in Lion was a love letter to Connor and Isabella); failed IVF and the birth of daughter Faith via a surrogate and the sudden death of her dad Anthony from a heart attack.

Nicole Kidman and fellow Aussie star Naomi Watts. Picture: Getty Images for AFI)

Nicole Kidman accepts her AFI Lifetime Achievement Award from her idol, Meryl Streep. Picture: Getty Images

And yet she’s a stoic in the true sense of the word.

This litany of tragedies hasn’t defined her but they’ve informed her acting so comprehensively that she can traverse the full spectrum of human emotion like few others. She plays innocent, deranged, knowing, comic.

She has a facility with period as much as modern.

She’s as funny as Meg Ryan and as nuanced as her idol Meryl Streep.

She became the first Australian woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress and as Nine’s Richard Wilkins told me, he had goosebumps watching her receive her award on Sunday.

“I believe good things happen to good people and she’s a good person,” he says.

‘CHOOSE LOVE’

Should she be more formally honoured?

“Well, everyone would recognise her if they bumped into her in Woollies.”

Granted, she’ll still be on our screens for decades to come because as Keith says of his wife: “She doesn’t act, she accesses – she portals emotionally, mentally, physically.”

But it’s something else he commended her for that truly speaks to Nicole’s character.

His addictions just four months into their marriage in 2006, he revealed, “blew their marriage to smithereens” and prompted him to seek rehab.

Nicole stood by him.

As Keith said, she showed what love in action really looks like.

It’s that love he references in Without You. Whatever happens, according to Keith, Nicole’s mantra is simple: “Choose love.”

Surely it’s time we truly valued this extraordinary woman and loved her back.

Originally published as C’mon Australia, let’s give Nicole the love she deserves