THE BURNING ISSUE #2 - Nicole, you've got to be kidding me?

By Laurent Kelly / February 28, 2010

What ever your thoughts are on Nicole Kidman (and believe me there are quite a range of opinions on the woman) one thing that cannot be denied is that she is an actress who will not just do anything for a paycheque. You can see it in her eyes and the way that she talks about her roles and her experiences that she has thought about each project she chooses on very carefully and has decided that it would be a good journey for her to embark on €“ after all you don€™t blindly go into work with directors such as Lars Von Trier and Stanley Kubrick thinking that it€™s all going to be plain sailing.

Often her choices have been very interesting indeed and once out of the shadow of Tom Cruise she has compiled a varied portfolio of an actress who is willing to try out any type of role in any type of setting. With her looks and her figure she could have made Hollywood very easy for herself but she has always embraced and enjoyed the challenge of testing herself in different situations. I have never had reason to complain before because the results on the whole have been very satisfying.

Although she has had some stellar roles in the nineties (she is chillingly brilliant as celebrity mad Suzanne Malone in To Die For) Hollywood didn€™t really start to take notice of her talents until 2001 when she was suddenly everywhere you looked or turned over a magazine page with her three distinctively unique roles in Moulin Rouge, The Others and Birthday Girl. In each of these performances she demonstrated the skills of an actress who could reinvent herself for each project, where you very much watching a different Nicole with every performance. This trend continued with her Oscar Winning role in The Hours and in Dogville. Although she wasn€™t given much to work with in Cold Mountain, she then hit what I considered to be a career peak in Birth. Although the film flopped and in truth wasn€™t executed all that well from a very intriguing initial idea, Nicole€™s performance in this film is absolutely mesmirising. Acting with every fibre of her being everything about her timing and her physical expressions felt chillingly authentic and represented the perfect example of an actor/actress obtaining every inch possible from their material. Throughout the film I sat in awe as I watched perhaps the greatest female screen performance I had seen since Juliette Binoche in Three Colours Blue. I was convinced at this stage that Nicole was going to come to occupy the Meryl Streep position of untouchable peer and academy respect.

Nicole Kidman in Birth

What has followed since however has been largely disappointing. Two bad remakes (Bewitched, The Invasion), an overlong sweeping epic that never goes anywhere in Australia, an adaptation of the fantastic Northern Lights that was so underwhelming that in somewhat embarrassing circumstances they are not even making a sequel and the 100 minute music video that was Nine which I was glad to see do so badly at the Box office. It is not just the choices though. Lately her acting style has become less reminiscent of a versatile actress who performs with her soul but more like Nicole Kidman playing Nicole Kidman playing her role. I always used to feel like I was watching her characters but now I feel like I€™m watching Nicole trying her hardest to act. And I€™m sure that she is still trying hard but the magic that she used to exhibit on screen to absorb you into her performance seems to have disappeared. I am writing this article now because her recent role in Nine reflects everything bad about the new Nicole Kidman performance. Showy without the necesarry intensity, lines being read as if they are on autocue and a face that seems to be constantly looking for the right emotion. What has happened to the wonderful character actress who used to make it look all so natural? Luckily the future seems bright. Her next film Rabbit Hole where she plays the role of a grieving parent after her son's accidental death is just the kind of gutsy, body performance (eyes, shoulders, cheekbones) that she should really be able to connect to as she has in the past made a fine art of playing women in the midst of an emotional crisis. The Danish Girl also set for release later this year also carries a very interesting premise and is another role that should really challenge the actress. Add to the mix such developmental projects as the Dusty Springfield biopic and I'm hoping that such roles will help to reignite the intensity and passion of one of my favourite actresses. In a film industry full of too many stereotypical roles and the same type of people always playing them it's always refreshing to see experimentation. This is what drew me to Nicole in the first place and I'm hoping that it is what will help me to draw interest in her career once again.