Was the whole Lenny Kravitz thing a sham? Jude and Nic have been at it again, spotted this week in New York doing what celebs do, trying to avoid being recognised. Staff at the exclusive Carlyle Hotel were amazed when a taxi pulled up outside and a lanky ginger giraffe climbed out - could it be Nicole Kidman? 'Yes it was,' an obliging doorman affirmed. 'That's who just arrived.' Within half an hour Jude Law was there too, dashing in with two bags and returning to his limo for two more. Surely not a long stay?
Nope, just a quickie. At midnight, Nic's minder was outside the hotel and spent an hour checking every car in the street for cameras. All clear, the actress was out, swathed in a large coat and away. Paparazzi got the shot anyway, naturally. Jude slept in and left the next day at 1pm. Now Sadie Frost has instigated divorce proceedings, does this mean the love that dare not speak its name - and sues if anyone else does - can finally own up?
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The stunning Nicole Kidman was in New York Wednesday night, but it was a serious theme that took center stage. Gary Sinise and Anthony Hopkins costar in "The Human Stain," a story about an abused woman who falls for an older man.
Nicole told "Extra" that playing a battered woman presented her with a difficult challenge. She says, "It’s difficult in the sense that you want to honor women who have been through a situation like this, and you want to protect the way in which she's presented."
The emotional thriller brought out Juliana Margulies, Jacinda Barrett, and hoops star Rick Fox. Even David Copperfield sensed magic in the movie.
Hopkins told "Extra" this weekend that he is proud that "The Human Stain" is a throwback to good old-fashioned movie making. Hopkins says, "As they say in Hollywood, it is a character-driven movie. Whatever that means. It’s a good story with powerful themes."
Hopkins and Kidman strike up a heated love match in the film, and Nicole admitted she couldn't have asked for a better partner. She says, "He’s wonderful. I think he's wonderful. It was so good to be able to work with him. He's one of the great actors."
"The Human Stain" is in theatres beginning October 3rd.
Kidman's kids' complicated life
Nicole Kidman says she feels guilty about the way her children are being brought up.
Kidman adopted two children, Isabella, 11, and Conor, eight, with her former husband Tom Cruise during their 10-year marriage.
Since the couple divorced in 2001, the children divide their time between both parents' Los Angeles homes and Kidman's second home in Australia.
"My kids come to the film sets and they give their opinion in terms of the different characters I play," the Oscar winner said at the Toronto Film Festival.
"They have a complicated life, and it's something I feel guilty for."
Kidman, who was promoting her latest movie The Human Stain, said there were limits to what the children were allowed to see on set.
"With Human Stain I wouldn't have them around during a sex scene," she said.
However while Kidman may feel guilt over her children's lifestyle, it has not put one of them off.
Kidman, 36, said one of the children - she would not say which one - wanted to pursue an acting career, while the other one "couldn't think of anything worse".
Kidman stands tall
LIKE a young Marlene Dietrich, Nicole Kidman stepped out in New York yesterday in an androgynous tailored suit with another fashion and acting icon by her side - Lauren Bacall.
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The Hollywood stars have made two movies together, both of which will be released here next year - the Lars von Trier arthouse film Dogville and the mystery drama Birth, in which Bacall plays Kidman's mother.
Bacall, who turns 79 next week, and 36-year-old Kidman, have many things in common, including their love of acting and fashion.
In June, Kidman received the 2003 Fashion Icon Award by the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
At the time, CFDA executive director Peter Arnold said: "Nicole Kidman's style has had an undeniable impact on fashion.
"As an actress, she has developed her many memorable characters with an innate understanding of the artistry of clothes. At the same time, she has elegantly established her personal style and own iconic presence worldwide."
Previous winners of the prestigious fashion award include Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and, of course, Bacall. Bacall entered the movie industry after a film director's wife convinced her to take a screen test.
Just 19, she starred in To Have and Have Not, opposite screen legend Humphrey Bogart. It would be the first of many films the pair would make together before marrying in 1945.
Consistently voted one of the world's sexiest women, Bacall began a stage career after the death of Bogart in 1957, winning prestigious Tony awards for her appearances in Applause and Woman of the Year.
But one thing sets them apart. Unlike Kidman, who was named best actress at this year's Academy Awards, Bacall, who is one of Hollywood's most acclaimed actors, has never won an Oscar.
Nicole Kidman / "The Human Stain", "In the Cut" & "Dogville"
Interview by Paul Fischer at the Toronto Film Festival
Kidman’s dedication is apparent in the films in which she stars, Dogville and The Human Stain. It’s the latter that has caused much discussion, in which a sometimes nude and seductive Kidman falls for a 70-year old former professor, played by Anthony Hopkins. Eyebrows may indeed be raised at the sight of the 36-year old beauty lusting after the much older Hopkins, but Kidman shrugs off the criticism, admitting that age doesn’t really matter. "The reason people are drawn together, the reason people choose each other, we never know."
Kidman even admits that without all the exterior forces working against them, the relationship of the two characters in The Human Stain definitely could have worked, even though both people were so emotionally damaged. "The different people that enter into your life at different times, they enter into it, because you allow them, they enter because of timing, they enter because of a connection between two people, not the way in which their bodies look."
She says people who operate on strictly physical level probably have very superficial relationships that don't stand a chance. "A 70-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman, a 25-year-old man and a 70-year-old woman, bring it on! It doesn't matter,” she exclaims, laughing loudly in the process.
She also dismissed questions about whether she can be believable as a janitor and a farmhand, which is what her strangely mysterious character does in The Human Stain. "I cleaned toilets when I was an usherette in Sydney and my hands got very dirty. Whether you believe me or not, I tried to do the best I could to honour her as a woman."
Human Stain is but one of three intense dramas that Kidman has done. Apart from her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, there is Lars von Triers’ complex and experimental Dogville. Though much has been reported about the so-called rift between Kidman and the strange Danish director, the actress speaks genuinely passionately about the film and its director. “With Lars, you don’t feel like you’re making a movie, but rather entering into a world, particularly because the way in which we did it.” She recalls working in Sweden, “working in a small town and we all worked together, and in a way, you become part of Lars’ psyche, in a way. You go to sleep, you have dinner and breakfast with him, you go to work you eat lunch together and so you’re almost joined at the hip.” Kidman admits that while such a work environment is exciting, “it’s also a very confronting experience, resulting in the different films that he makes. So when I arrived in Sweden, I knew that I’d be working with somebody who ‘already had a complicated relationship with Bjork, but I arrived there going: I’m here, I’m open and I’m raw, ready to work and ready to be part of your life.” There were no sets to speak of, Kidman recalls, “but I was prepared to work through it. He’s so unconventional, he operates the camera himself, he’ll reach out and hold your hand and talk to you and move you around. It’s just a very different format”, Kidman explains. “It’s not about trying to achieve a performance, it’s more about him trying to get inside your head.” Kidman promised to do the rest of the director’s trilogy but suddenly backed out of the second one, maintaining a need to spend “some time with my kids early next year.”
Next to her ever-flourishing career, it’s her children that remain a priority for Nicole, insisting that neither she nor Tom Cruise “ever discussed the custody in terms of the children. It’s important for me that my kids are a part of my life. That means they come to the film set, they’re aware of what I’m doing and they get to give their opinion in terms of the different characters,” says Kidman. “But they have a complicated life and it’s something you feel guilty for, and something you apologise for, and it’s something you say: Well, they’re going to get an education out of this that will be slightly different and that’s going to be very artistic. I just think that anything you can do to stimulate a child artistically is important. So who knows how it will all turn out in the end but I’m trying to incorporate them and keep them so their memories will be very vivid in relation to the work.”
Kidman also concedes that she still suffers from bouts of stage fright, not only before doing theatrical roles, but when she first commits to choosing a film, and sometimes she has to back out. She says Meryl Streep - with whom she co-starred in The Hours - often has the same fear. "I'm actually desperate to do a play again within the next 18 months because if I don't do it I'll never go back onstage. And I want to do it and throw myself in that arena again and want to do it bravely with something that’s kind of unusual and bold.”
She says although she served as a producer, because of that fear of not being in the proper emotional state at the time, she had to bow out of the leading role that Meg Ryan took in Jane Campion's upcoming psychological thriller In the Cut. "It was a very painful thing to give up," she admits. "But at the same time I was very glad for Meg Ryan.” Had Kidman starred in the film, eyebrows would have been raised again, as Ryan plays a lonely academic who becomes sexually awakened by an aggressive cop on the hunt for a serial killer. Sex is back, and a common theme at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, and Kidman is certain as to why films dealing with sexual relationships are suddenly back in vogue. “Because it’s important and it’s a part of our life because I think the denial of it isn’t going to help any of us. I also think there is a group of people going: Let’s deal with sexual issues, let’s deal with things that are confronting, and hopefully stimulate people into conversation and ideas.”
As for life after Oscar, Kidman says it didn't sink in until she saw for herself what a global event the Academy Awards were. "I've realized just from my travels, the awareness of it is worldwide."
She says, too, she is especially glad to have won for playing Virginia Woolf, “because she gave me so much and then on top of it, she gave me an Oscar, and I’m glad to have had that through her. I have a strange relationship with Miss Woolf.”
"THE HUMAN STAIN" OPENS IN THE US ON OCTOBER 3RD, 2003
And the work has been very intense of latte, which means she has to shift gears. Kidman next film is finally a comedy, a light-hearted remake of the 1970s horror movie The Stepford Wives. “It's tough being funny!" she says with that hearty laugh of hers. And, by the way, reports of her playing the Elizabeth Montgomery part in a film version of the old TV sitcom Bewitched are premature. She says she hasn't yet committed to it and if she did, Samantha's famous magical nose-twitch “would probably be CGI”, she adds, laughingly.
"IN THE CUT" OPENS IN THE US ON OCTOBER 22ND, 2003
"DOGVILLE" OPENS IN THE US IN LATE 2003
Is Nicole Kidman too skinny?
Updated at 12:18 on September 10, 2003, EST.
(CP) - Is Nicole Kidman too skinny? That was the buzz on the Internet and in the Australian press after news photos taken of her at the Toronto festival Saturday night circled the globe. Kidman, in a clingy white gown and with gardenias in her hair, was photographed arriving for the gala of her festival film The Human Stain with Anthony Hopkins. There were concerns that she may have had a weight-loss problem.
"Silly" is how her Oz publicist Wendy Day described the speculation, adding that Kidman had been working hard on her two upcoming films, a comedy remake of The Stepford Wives and a civil war drama Cold Mountain.
"She's always been a thin build," said Day, adding that Kidman has never required any assistance from diets.
Nicole Kidman arrives for the premiere of The Human Stain at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 6. (CP/Aaron Harris)
