Here’s another great, in depth interview from Cannes. I don’t think I’ve posted it before, but I am losing track with all the new promotion!
Nicole Kidman: “I have an incredibly powerful imagination”
May 29th 2012Wearing a stunning black and white Christian Dior dress and black Manolo Blahnik heels, Nicole Kidman reigns supreme on the Cannes red carpet. A busy woman, she was promoting Paperboy, starring opposite Zac Efron and John Cusack, as well as the HBO film, Hemingway and Gellhorn, opposite Clive Owen. Her husband, Keith Urban was by her side and the happy couple looked glamorous, as always, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. She gushes about her adorable husband, talks about motherhood, and her upcoming role as Grace Kelly.
Q: People always describe you as fearless. Do you agree with that description?
No, I think I have an enormous amount of fear, but I think I just push through it.
Q: How do you push through it?
Sometimes other people push me through it, and sometimes I just make myself. I don’t even know how to describe it. I’ll feel terrified, and then I’ll just go, “But what’s the worst that can happen?” So, if people don’t like it, so I fall flat on my face, I hurt myself, okay. I try to think like that in everything, even in terms of falling love. You go, I’m going to love to the fullest that I can, because why not? And I’m going to love my children that way, and I love my husband that way, and maybe there is going to be pain, but I am willing to accept the pain.
Q: This morning in the newspaper, the headline was, “Nicole Kidman Sets the Festival on Fire”.
What paper was that? Oh no. (laughter)
Q: Were you prepared for these two films to have the reaction that they’re having?
I knew Paperboy would be controversial. I have not seen Paperboy but I now see why it is controversial, (laughs) but at the same time, I thought the diversity of both of them I hoped would be interesting to people. I’m in a place where I get to go and try things that’s important to me and I will continue to do that while I am given the opportunities and if I am not, then I will try to make some of those opportunities for myself. Like with Rabbit Hole, I went and found that and it was very important for me to make a film about the power for the love of a child and loss in a way, and that place to go tread in terms of losing your child, is the most terrifying place that I wouldn’t want to live. So I wanted to go there and try to find those emotions and somehow put them on screen to honour them, because some people are walking through that, and that was something that I wanted to go find.
Q: You said you had different desires from Gellhorn, in what way are your desires different?
I want a very deep, intimate, monogamous relationship. I want that, that’s what I cultivate in my life. I want to raise children, I love children. And Martha loves children of the world, but I want to raise children, I love raising children.
Q: She’s a great role model for children, Martha.
She is a great role model. And Phil says that, he says, you made this film for your daughters, I go, did I? He goes, yeah, you don’t know, but subconsciously, you made it for them.
Q: Charlotte in Paperboy not so much?
With Charlotte, I wanted to go try something, and be dangerous and sort of try to shake it up, because I’m in a place where I want to stimulate myself, and so that was stimulating to me. I was down in New Orleans, I was working with (John) Cusack, I was working with Zac (Efron), Lee (Daniels) is a force to be reckoned with, I don’t know if you met him, but he’s like on fire, and that was great for me, it was very different and he’s got an incredible story, he’s a gay African-American man who is standing on the red carpet last night weeping. And he’s made some powerful things.
Q: You’re good friends with Naomi Watts.
Yeah…
Q: And she’s been offered “Lady”, and you’ve been offered “Grace of Monaco.” Have you talked about these iconic figures?
Well I think she was cast way before I was cast in Grace, but we actually haven’t talked about it. We have children that are of similar ages, so that’s a lot of our conversation and we’ve been friends since we were fourteen. Our paths almost crossed here. She was here a week ago, but no, we text and we call but that’s never in our conversations.
Q: This is not the first time that you made an interpretation of a real person. How do you find the essence of a person?
I read and try to enter into the psychology of the person and the wiring of the person and I’ve always had the ability, ever since I was a child, to be able to imagine. I have an incredibly powerful imagination, and I can also emotionally attach, which is also dangerous, because I can sort of emotionally like, if I’m in a hospital, and I do work with people with cancer and people that are dying, I have to be so careful not to, because I can take on almost the emotions. I don’t know how it happens or why. My mum was a nurse, and she’d be like, ‘Nicole, Nicole, you are too intense, you are feeling it too much, walk away,’ but I think that must have something to do with it. I’ve always been able to do it since I was a child. And I even know when I went to Romania, when I went and saw orphanages, and when I went to Kosovo and I met with women who have been victims of war crimes. The woman who was taking me from the UN took me aside and said, ‘Nicole, you can’t,’ cause I was so emotionally wrecked by it and I had taken on so much of the emotion, she was like, ‘You won’t be able to do this work, if you do that, you’ve got to learn.’ But I think it’s the thing that helps me with acting.
Q: In what way is your husband different from Hemingway? Are there any similarities?
No, I mean, he inspires me but we met later in life. I think when you meet later in life as a couple you have a much better chance of really going to a deep place. I think when you are younger, or sometimes not, my parents met when they were 23, but for us, we met later in life, and we kind of know who we are, and where we are at. I’m very, very fortunate because I just…. it sounds so corny, but I just adore him. I just love him. And it’s that simple and it’s going to look really corny in print and I’m just saying it. (laughter) It’s the truth, yeah.
Q: Can you talk about Grace Kelly?
Yeah, I mean, that’s going to be a whole different thing, and really over the next few months is when I do my research. I don’t start shooting until much later in the year, so now I leave here, I go do one more day of work, and then I go to Australia and I’m just supporting Keith through The Voice. He’s doing The Voice in Australia right now. And he’s such an Aussie boy from Caboolture, who has still got that, and talent beyond anything. I mean, you haven’t seen anything yet.
Q: He’s charming on that show.
He is.
Q: So you are usually based in Australia?
No, only at the moment. We are based in Nashville because he’s in his world of country music. That’s his passion and so we have to live there. We have to live in Nashville if you are in country music. I think you can live in Austin Texas as well and Oklahoma, but we live in Nashville and that’s where his work is. I am perfectly happy there and I’m glad to be able to support him.
Q: I remember you said that once you jumped on the bed at Hotel du Cap…
Yeah. I now jump on it with Keith. (laughs) I don’t have to do it alone now. (laughs)