Nicole Kidman bets big and digs deep, traits she lately brought to a straightforward turn as a supportive wife in 'The Railway Man' and a venturesome role as an explorer-cartographer in 'Queen of the Desert.'
It's too easy to start with the face or what she wears, how she sits. The color of her earrings. The essence is in the vowels, the way she holds and releases them. The voice drops a register, as if in a conspiracy, and a morning conversation drifts across art, ambition, age and riding camels in the desert.
Many roles come to mind when Nicole Kidman speaks: inconsolable mother, suicidal writer, dangerous weather girl, nuclear scientist, gangster lover, top-hatted cabaret singer and Southern femme fatale with an earthy remedy for jellyfish stings. They are all there, unapologetic, in tones of tenacity and risk that have defined her career. One senses she is the kind who would either win big or lose it all at the track.
"I'm going to make choices. I'm going to live and die on them. I'll take the flak. I'll take the hits. I'll take the accolades," said Kidman, who won the Academy Award for lead actress for her rendering of Virginia Woolf in "The Hours." "I'll take whatever comes with it, but ultimately I'm on an exploration. I want to excite myself."
Her latest role — as the dutiful wife of a psychologically scarred former prisoner of war — is not adorned in eccentricities; it is more steady flame than fireworks. It does not flaunt the diamonds and intrigue in her upcoming portrayals of Princess Grace Kelly and Gertrude Bell, a spy and explorer who trekked the deserts of the Middle East.
Her depiction of Patti Lomax in "The Railway Man" is a quiet portrait of a woman fighting for her husband's sanity. "I'm usually larger than life and this is real life," said Kidman. "I think Baz [Luhrmann] said once, 'You're never going to be cast as the girl next door,' and I'm, like, sometimes I'd love to be cast as the girl next door. I really see Patti as the girl next door."
The film, which opens Friday, is based on the autobiography of Eric Lomax, a Scot in the British army who was tortured by the Japanese during World War II. It is a tale of atrocity, memory and how two broken men — Lomax and his tormentor — are healed decades later in an unanticipated act of forgiveness. Kidman's part is small, poignant and distinctive.
Such sentiment sent her to Morocco and along the Algeria border, where she recently camped and rode camels while filming "Queen of the Desert," Werner Herzog's biopic about Gertrude Bell, a British archaeologist and explorer instrumental in mapping modern-day Jordan and Iraq.
"It was thrilling to play a woman in 1915 heading off into the desert. She did what Lawrence of Arabia did, in a different way," said Kidman, who is expected to have at least four films out this year. "To be in her skin has given me incredible desire and boldness right now ... and nobody knows about her, which infuriates me."
She leanedback. It appeared she needed another adventurous role — quickly — before the mystique of Gertrude Bell faded. "Keep finding the stories and telling them," said Kidman, who lives in Nashville with her two daughters and husband Keith Urban. "I still don't think the great 'War and Peace' [movie] has been made."
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