Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life (30 page)

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In 2011, Nicole began work on her most controversial film since
Eyes Wide Shut
. Based on Pete Dexter's novel of the same name,
The Paperboy
is a Southern gothic, psycho-sexual thriller set in Florida in the late 1960s. A newspaper reporter (Matthew McConaughey) returns to his hometown to investigate a case involving a death row inmate (John Cusack). Accompanying the reporter is a black colleague (David Oyelowo) who can't hide his disdain for white Southerners. The plot is complicated by the fact that it is the reporter's hometown, his father owns the local newspaper, and the reporter's younger brother has recently been unlucky in love.

The final complication is Nicole Kidman's character Charlotte Bless, a trashy sex-obsessed woman who has a fixation on the death row inmate. Because she has been corresponding with him, the reporter takes her with him for his first interview. Things quickly get out of hand when the inmate, sitting across the room, asks Charlotte to spread her legs and simulate oral sex on him, a request that Nicole the actress delivers with breathtaking conviction.   

  There are absolutely no likeable characters in the entire film. Nicole's characters usually end up being likeable if nothing else, but not in this case. She is fascinating in the sheer magnitude of her slutty conquests (not only does she do the inmate, she does the younger brother and the reporter's black colleague, explaining that there is nothing more natural than sex), but she has no redeeming qualities, except perhaps her willingness to urinate on the younger brother to ease the pain of multiple jellyfish stings. Director Lee Daniels had second thoughts about leaving the urination scene in the film, but Nicole insisted that it was appropriate for the character she was playing. The only thing in the film that Nicole refused to do was to utter the N-word. The director insisted, but she explained she had an African-American son and wouldn't do it.

The sex scenes in the film are rough and primal, the kind of lovemaking you would expect in a swamp inhabited by witless rednecks and alligators in heat. Nicole got into character for the sex scenes and provided such an enthusiastic performance that the director noticed that when she returned to the set the next day her legs were covered in bruises, the result of simulated rough sex.

Barked the director: "You crazy bitch—go put some makeup on your legs!"

She did as she was asked. She hadn't even noticed the bruises.

"Kidman takes it to the limit as the prison groupie, slapping on the older-woman allure, Barbie-doll wig, lashes black as beetles, and any number of itsy-bitsy outfits in acid yellows and oranges," wrote Anthony Quinn for Great Britain's
Independent
. "It's like her news-reporter siren from
To Die For
twenty years on, and she positively devours the role."

One of the fascinating things about watching Nicole deliver a performance as a crazed, slutty woman is that in your heart you know that she is the opposite of the character she is portraying. There is something immensely appealing about witnessing a beautiful woman act out sexual fantasies that run counter to her basic instincts, a little like watching a gum-chewing nun do a pole dance wearing nothing but sunglasses. She becomes the Beauty and the Beast, all wrapped into one person, a self-exiled slave to her passion, hell bent on travelling where other women fear to go. Morality ceases to be an issue.         

Later in the year, she received terrifying news that a polyp had been discovered on Keith’s vocal chords. He underwent surgery on November 11, 2011, to have it removed and he was instructed not to utter a word for three full weeks. As if that were not bad enough, he was instructed that he could not even laugh. How was he going to do that in a household with two little girls and an actress wife?

Nicole and Keith were limited in their communications to writing notes to each other. When they disagreed, they did so in writing, with Keith sometimes writing that Nicole’s comment was “unacceptable.” Oh, to have been a fly on the wall to witness them hastily scrawling notes to each other, ripping paper from tablets and tossing it away, and then making up with hugs and kisses.

Once the three months were up, they had to face the moment of his first post-operative attempt at speaking. Nicole was fraught with worry. Would he sound the same? Would he have a different voice? Would he still be able to sing? The build up to “speech day” made a nervous wreck of her. Finally, when the time came, they faced it with the solemnity of a statue unveiling.

Keith spoke. Nicole listened. They both broke down in tears when they realized that he had made a complete recovery. “How many people experience their husband’s first word?” she explained to
W
magazine. “If that doesn’t bring you closer, you’re not breathing.”   

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In December 2013, Nicole and Keith traveled to Australia to attend her parents’ 50
^th
wedding anniversary. When they returned to the United States it was time for Keith to resume work on 
American Idol
for the live portions of the program.  In the Fall, Keith had joined fellow panelists Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick Jr. to begin taping his second season as a judge on
American Idol
.  The television exposure has magnified his star wattage many times over and made him more than just another country music sensation. He won over viewers with a mixture of compassion toward the contestants and honest evaluation of musical talent, all done without the inflated ego tug-o-wars that have characterized previous panelists. The emotional attachment he made with the contestants came as a complete surprise to him. He found himself thinking like a football coach, urging certain contestants to do better, work harder, or believe more in themselves.  

Going into the second season, the only question in Keith’s mind was how his
American Idol
obligations would affect the release of his new album,
Fuse.
That turned out not to be an issue when the album was released in September 2013. Unlike previous albums,
Fuse
was a product of consultations with numerous producers and fewer musicians, with the producers using technology to build his musical tracks one note at a time. He forsook the energy of live recording with session players to embrace the electronic precision of computer generated tracks. The album had more of a pop feel to it than previous efforts, an obvious overture to crossover music buyers.

Critics were generally supportive.
Hitfix’s
Melinda Newman gave the album an overall “B.” “Probably the biggest stretch sonically on the album, ‘Come Back to Me,’ is built around a hypnotic electronic loop and a woozy guitar solo.” Will Hermes, writing in
Rolling Stone
, commented: “It’s hardly news: Urban has been working crossovers since his 1999 solo debut . . . what is surprising, though, is how unforced and fun the record sounds. An affable country talent, Urban here becomes an impressive twang-pop ambassador.”

As Keith fired up his career, Nicole escalated her movie making commitments by signing on to do seven movies for release in 2013 and 2014:
Stoker
,
The Railway Man
,
Before I Go to Sleep
,
Paddington, Grace of Monaco,
and
The Family Fang.
Two films were set for 2015,
Strangerland
and
Queen of the Desert
.  Of those films,
Grace of Monaco
, is the most interesting and revealing because it reflects Nicole’s life choices in many ways. Grace Kelly gave up a spectacularly promising Hollywood career to move to Monaco to be with the man she loved.  When Nicole moved to Nashville to be with the man she loved, she, in effect, turned her back on the Hollywood establishment in an attempt to live her life on her own terms.

When the film was released in 2014, Nicole traveled to France to attend the Cannes Film Festival and was greeted by a boycott by the royal family of Monaco, who had not seen the film but had issued a statement that said, in part: "The trailer appears to be a farce and confirms the totally fictional nature of this film."

As the unofficial spokesperson for the film, Nicole responded that the film had no malice toward the family, but she added the obvious: "It's a fictionalization. You take dramatic license."

The film is set in the early days of Grace Kelly's marriage to Prince Rainer, when she seriously considered returning to Hollywood to work with Alfred Hitchcock.

Nicole explained that her favorite performance of Grace was in Hitchcock's
Rear Window
." I want them to know the performance was done with love. If they did see the film, they'd see there was an enormous amount of affection for both their parents."

A reporter asked Nicole if she would ever choose romance over career, as Kelly did when she married the prince. Nicole replied in the affirmative: "I think love is the core emotion. I always said when I won the Oscar I went home and did have that, but it was the most intensely lonely moment of my life."

Once she fulfilled her duties at the festival, Nicole wasted no time returning to her home in Nashville. Nicole and Keith have reached a point in their marriage when they thank God for every day that they have together, but they do so with a realization that happiness does not come cheap. Each day they are together is a struggle.

For Keith it is a struggle against alcoholism and a struggle to blend his career ambitions with his hopes for his marriage and family. Keith once told a reporter that Nicole has been more than a life-changing influence on him and, in fact, had saved his life. 

 For Nicole it is a struggle over surrendering her life to her husband and her children, while maintaining her self-identity as an actress and combating the depression that she experiences when she fails to live up to the promises that she makes to herself. After making a ton of movies about relationships, Nicole has learned what few people ever come to understand. Relationships are neither free nor easy. To be successful relationships must endure a lifetime of dedicated maintenance.

Nicole was never comfortable in her marriage to Tom, not even in the best of times. Too much of their relationship was based on fantasy. She was never able to achieve a balance between fantasy and reality, especially within the smothering confines dictated by Scientology. Today, within her marriage to Keith, she has found exactly the right balance to exist as a wife, parent, and artist.

FILMOGRAPHY

Mark Spain

James Wingrove

Peter Summer

Nicole Kidman

Manalpuy

Vineta O

Malley

Maurice Houghes

Bob Hunt

Nicole Kidman’s character is one of three children in the Thompson household. As Christmas approaches, the family learns that it will lose its farm on January 1 unless it can raise enough money to pay the mortgage. One night, as the family sleeps, thieves steal the family’s prize possession, a spirited racehorse named Prince. The following morning Nicole, along with her two brothers and an aborigine named Manalpuy, sneak away from the farm to go after the horse. They undergo many adventures before they finally catch up with the horse thieves. This well-directed film provides excellent family entertainment; it is aired every Christmas on Australian television.

CAST

Nicole Kidman

David Argue

John Ley

Angelo D’Angelo

James Lugton

Bryan Marshall

Brian Sloman

Peter Browne

Bill Brady

Linda Newton

Bob Hicks

Guy Norris

Chris Hession

Producers: Tom Broadbridge, Paul F. Davies

Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith

Written by: Patrick Edgeworth, Russell Hagg

The BMX Bandits is a teen bicycle club. Nicole Kidman, who plays Judy, meets the bikers when the rowdy teens crash into grocery carts at the store where she works. She gets fired because of the incident and joins the biker club. Their paths cross with a gang of bank robbers when they accidentally discover a cache of high-tech radios that were meant for the robbers. They sell the radios, one at a time, as the robbers track them down. Much of the film is about the bikers’ efforts to escape from the robbers. At one point, the robbers corner Nicole in a warehouse and it looks bleak for her for a moment; then she escapes and leads the robbers on a chase through the city. Nicole handles her part beautifully, but she often seems ill at ease with her body. She is taller than most of the men in the movie and her physical presence is a factor in every scene in which she appears.

CAST

Nicole Kidman

Brett Climo

Ernie Gray

John Flaus

Ned Lander

Tony Barry

Paul Bertram

Robert Coleby

Anna Maria Monticelli

Producer: Moya Iceton

Director: Denny Lawrence

Written by: Anne Brooksbank

Brett Climo plays the role of a stable boy that talks his employer into letting him take one of his best horses, Archer, on a 500-mile journey to enter a prestigious race in Melbourne. On his first day on the road, he is robbed of his money. On the second day, he comes across a farm, where he asks for food and lodging. He meets Nicole Kidman, who is there to visit her uncle. They become friends and then part when he resumes his journey and she goes home to her own family.

After another adventure or two, Climo meets Nicole again when his travels take him to her parents’ farm. He leaves Archer in the barn so that he can attend a wedding party in the house. While he dances with Nicole, Archer breaks free and joins a herd of wild horses. Climo tracks Archer down and resumes his journey to Melbourne.

his is a good family film that capitalizes on spectacular scenery. Nicole does not have a large impact on the film, but she shows incredible poise in her scenes with Climo and that, in itself, attracts attention to her character.  

CAST

Nicole Kidman

Garry McDonald

Kym Gyngell

Peter Collingwood

Jonathan Hardy

Roderick Williams

Mark Little

Roy Baldwin

Alex Menglet

Tony Rickards

Simon Thorpe

Producers: Margot McDonald, Bob Weis

Director: Bob Weis

Written by: Philip Dalkin

This is a comedy that depicts the final stretch of William Wills’s and Robert Burke’s crossing of the Australian outback. No one associated with the film was willing to discuss it with the author and all video copies of the film seem to have vanished.