Nicole Kidman is an elegant, passionate and incredibly astute movie star. As an actress, her capabilities have never been anything but impressive - she manages, quite effortlessly, to infuse old school Hollywood tradition with a great and powerful modern sensibility, embodies all the glitz and glamour of the classic cinema idols, and has all the range and talent to match it. Simply put, she's a true star. Like George Clooney - another actor with "classic" sensibilities - Kidman has made herself somewhat indispensable to the Hollywood scene. She is one of the most popular actresses of her generation, and constantly seeks to work with a wide variety of auteurs and controversial filmmakers. Kidman is fearless, never afraid to tackle villainous or ill-tempered characters, and can play sweet, innocent and sexy just as brilliantly as she can play cold and evil. Of course, Kidman has, like most actors, made a few naff choices over the course of her career, and has (on more than one occassion) suffered under the weight of bland scripts and badly-realised projects. As a result, she has a fair number of forgettable or ill-judged performances admist her filmography. This week, Nicole Kidman can be seen in
Stoker, a dark, gothically-aligned drama in the Hitchcock tradition, directed by South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook and written by
Prison Break's Wentworth Miller. In a role that seems written for her, Kidman plays Evelyn Stoker, a recently windowed mother who must come to terms with both her own and her teenager daughter's sexual longings for her estranged brother-in-law. To celebrate the release of
Stoker, here are 5 awesome Nicole Kidman performances, and 5 that sucked...