Sex, Death, and Nicole Kidman Sex, Death, and Nicole Kidman
The New York Times
Between her experience on “Babygirl” and her mother’s death, the star has come to understand a lot about women in unfulfilled lives.
Nicole Kidman’s eyes widened. “Haven’t you been to the Rockettes?” she asked. “I go every year. Oh yeah, I’m obsessed!”
Over celery root soup at the Empire Diner in Manhattan last week, the 57-year-old Oscar winner regaled me with stories about the high-kicking Christmas spectacular, which she had attended the night before with her children and husband, the singer Keith Urban: “I was saying to my husband, ‘Why do we love it so much?’ And he said, ‘Because it’s a memory. You’re remembering the kid in you.’”
Lately, Kidman has been thinking a lot about this sort of thing, tracing her life and career as part of a continuum. Her new film, “Babygirl,” is one such reconnection: Though she has recently been seen in splashy streaming series like “The Perfect Couple” and “Lioness: Special Ops,” it marks a return to the kind of risky, auteur-driven filmmaking she used to be acclaimed for.
Directed by Halina Reijn, “Babygirl” stars Kidman as Romy, a put-together chief executive with a doting husband (Antonio Banderas) but an unsatisfying sex life: Afraid to explore her desire to be dominated, Romy finds her kink fulfilled by a young intern (Harris Dickinson) with whom she embarks on a tumultuous affair. “It’s very exposing,” Kidman admitted of the sexually charged film. When she watched it for the first time with an audience, she felt so naked and vulnerable that she buried her head in Reijn’s chest.
“Babygirl” could earn Kidman her sixth Oscar nomination and has already won her the prestigious Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival in September, though Kidman had to miss that ceremony after the death of her mother, Janelle, at 84. The two were quite close and her passing has put Kidman in a contemplative mood: Over the course of our conversation, she discussed not just “Babygirl” but also her mother’s unrealized ambitions and the difficulties that thwart female fulfillment, tackling those topics in a surprisingly unguarded way.
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