Welcome to Nicole's Magic, a fansite for the spectacular spectacular Academy Award winning Australian actress Nicole Kidman. Nicole is one of the most sought-after actresses of her generation, and is known for her roles in Moulin Rouge, The Hours and To Die For, and has recently been seen in the controversial thrillers Stoker and The Paperboy.
Nicole's Magic is the largest and most comprehensive fansite for Nicole, and is dedicated to supporting her and her career. As of March 2013, Nicole's Magic is entering a new phase of its fansite life, now focussing on paying tribute to Nicole's career up to and including 2006. Read more about what this entails here, and how you can keep up to date with her current career here. Nicole is our favourite actress, and we feel that this way we can provide a highly extensive and worthy tribute to this incredible woman. Comments, suggestions, sparkling diamonds, elephant love medleys and contributions are always more than welcomed so please contact me if you have anything to say. Enjoy your visit, add us to your Favourites and come back again soon!
NB: As part of our site overhaul, all of our content is moving over to a new system. While these changes take place many of the pages within this site will not work/give errors - please be patient as I work to fix them as quickly as I can!
Movie Of The Month
As part of a bi-monthly feature here at Nicole's Magic, each month we will be taking a look back at one of Nicole's films or acting projects. Nicole has an immense body of work behind her, and there's no better way to be reminded of her talent and how much we love her than immersing ourselves and taking an in depth look at those works.
"Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself..."
While this main site is now only focussing on Nicole's career up to 2006, you can still keep up-to-date with her current activities on our forum. Visit Nicole's Bulletin for the latest news and photos, and be sure to register to be able to post your own messages, and get access to even more Nicole chat and interaction.
For today’s Movie Of The Month (The Hours) related update, we have a bit of a flashback – photos from the 1996 Oscar Awards. Why? Because it was the first event that Nicole was photographed with her future The Hours co-star Meryl Streep! The twosome posed together on the red carpet with Nic’s then-husband. Meryl was nominated at this Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Bridges of Madison County, and coincidentally, their cast-mate Ed Harris was also nominated this year for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Apollo 13 … a nomination he repeated in 2003 for The Hours.
Nicole wore a baby blue Prada dress for the event, and this was one of the dresses that helped put her on the fashion map, because of it’s colour, and the fact that it was by a then-emerging designer. Nicole was starting to show how fashion forward she was! Nicole was also riding high career-wise at this point, thanks to the release of To Die For the year before.
We previously only had 10 photos from this event, but I have now updated our album and we have over 50 photos from it, most of which are in HQ.
We will have more on Nic’s co-stars in The Hours on our upcoming Movie Of The Month page for the film (coming in the next week, I hope!), but if you want more Meryl right now, you know where to visit.
As promised on Twitter, I have now made and added screencaptures from Dogville – and in HD none-the-less! I have to admit that I only watched the film for the first time a few weeks ago (its 3 hr running time put me off for 10 years!) … and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. I thought the film was just exceptional – I was glued to the screen the entire time and was fascinated by the characters, story, and the questions it raised. The tension was built up so subtly, and I loved how this was aided by the (lack of) set. As for Nicole’s performance, well she showed a new dimension to her talents and I was awed by her all over again! Dogville has definitely jumped into my top 5 favourite Nicole films/performances, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it too, so post a comment here if you’d like to share.
Check out the fantastic HD screencaps from the film in the Gallery. Remember that they will obviously contain massive spoilers!
During the awards season of 2002/3, CNN interviewed Nic at the Oscar Nominees Luncheon:
Women of Oscar: Kidman, Lane Year of the woman Thursday, March 13, 2003
The Oscar nominees facing the stiffest competition this year, many argue, are the best actress hopefuls.
Strong roles for women dominate the category this year with Salma Hayek, who played famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo; double nominee Julianne Moore, who portrayed an unhappy 1950s housewife in “Far From Heaven” for her best actress nod; Renee Zellweger’s feisty Roxy in “Chicago;” and two more women who shared their excitement with CNN.
With the rush for Oscar gold in full force, CNN anchor Daryn Kagan sat down with Academy Award nominees Nicole Kidman and Diane Lane after Monday’s Oscar luncheon in Beverly Hills, California.
• NICOLE KIDMAN
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: It’s just two girlfriends hanging out poolside. Year of the woman, so many great roles for women.
NICOLE KIDMAN, ACTRESS: I know. Isn’t that good?
KAGAN: Yes.
KIDMAN: Really good, actually … . In the Golden Globes, when I was — I said I want to say not just in film, as well in television. I mean, you see these women like Edie Falco, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall. They’re all doing such good work, it’s covering all mediums and that’s really exciting.
I just came across this really interesting article from TribecaFilm.com about Nicole’s film choices over the years. Read the start of it below, and head on over to the source for the whole thing. What did you make of it?
One for Me / One for Them: Nicole Kidman
For a movie star who has made their mark, the “One for Me, One for Them” strategy is a good way of maintaining one’s career path. By taking “one for them,” i.e. commercial pictures that pay well even if they’re not hugely artistic, they can give themselves the freedom and clout to take “one for me,” i.e. more creatively challenging/daring projects.
Nicole Kidman didn’t invent this strategy, but she’s been operating under it, more or less, for almost two decades, with varying degrees of success. Not to get too arbitrary about it, but 1995 is a good year to place the strategy’s starting point. That year, she won a Golden Globe for Gus Van Sant’s darkest of dark comedies, To Die For she also took a featured role in that summer’s giant blockbuster, Batman Forever. From there, Kidman would go on to strike a sometimes-pristine, sometimes-volatile balance between commercial and artistic.
1996 – 1999
To Die For and Batman Forever set Kidman on two paths. After Van Sant, Kidman clearly got a taste for the auteur, and she would soon work with Jane Campion on her follow-up to The Piano, The Portrait of a Lady. And, famously, she and her then-husband Tom Cruise teamed up on Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut. She earned critical raves for both. At the same time, Kidman became a box-office presence, doing the geopolitical adventure-thriller thing with George Clooney in The Peacemaker, as well as teaming with Sandra Bullock as sisters/witches/big fans of that “lime in the coconut” song in Practical Magic. It was a close balance at the time, but the best-case scenario for the “One for Me…” strategy is that the artsy picks end up enduring longer than the paycheck movies; Kidman achieved that in this year. Advantage: HER
Here’s another batch of The Hours promotional event photos for you, this time including photos from the Berlin Film Festival press conference for the film, and a few premieres & screenings Nic attended for other films around the same time. The Berlin press conference look is one of my favourites of Nicole’s – I love her dress, hair, and those cute little glasses! Again this update consists of many photos being replaced with high quality versions and duplicates being deleted etc.
I have more Movie Of The Month related gallery updates for you today! I’ve updated the gallery albums for another 6 events that Nic attended back in 2003 to promote The Hours – the list is below. Many photos have been replaced with higher quality versions, and there are a few new snaps in there. I particularly love … well, all of these actually, but Nic has some particularly cute expressions at the London press conference for The Hours, at which she heard she had received an Oscar nomination for the film! I will add more from the Berlin press conference for the film next, then start on the arduous task of going through photos from the award ceremonies Nic attended for the film – including the Oscars!
Hello Nicole fans! Today is a big day for Nicole’s Magic, as we celebrate a whopping 11 years online! Yes, this fansite was opened for your viewing way back on this day in 2002 – we started armed with a Moulin Rouge layout, a ton of content, a relatively small gallery and a whole lot of enthusiasm for Nic and her career. After a few ups and downs we are still here, and with this new phase of the site we are continually dedicated to paying tribute to this fascinating and trailblazing actress. In fact, I just re-watched Birth today, and was reminded of why she is my favourite. Thank you for visiting and supporting Nicole’s Magic, and here’s to many more years of reminding you of why there’s no-one else quite like Ms Kidman
To celebrate our birthday, I’ve continued with our Movie Of The Month updates and have revamped our Hollywood Walk Of Fame Star gallery album – all photos were deleted and have been re-added in better quality, plus additional HQs are now also available. Nic looked adorable here, and with over 300 HQ photos you are sure to enjoy your browsing of them ….
The actress, unrecognisable in the role of Virginia Woolf, tells John Hiscock about the making of her latest film, The Hours
It was both an unlikely and inspired piece of casting. For his follow-up to Billy Elliot, Stephen Daldry chose the glamorous Nicole Kidman, fresh from her Oscar-nominated performance in the glittering Moulin Rouge, to play the tormented Virginia Woolf in The Hours.
For the Australian actress, it was initially an exciting and daring challenge, but, as filming was about to begin and her marriage to Tom Cruise collapsed, the role of the depressed and suicidal writer became an emotional burden she did not feel she could bear.
“My life had basically fallen apart and suddenly I was put in the position of having to play Virginia and not really wanting to act and not really wanting to make a film,” she recalls. “I tried to get out of it but I wasn’t allowed to; so I went, ‘OK, off I go’ and I basically just absorbed her. I was in an emotional frame where I was able to receive her and all of the things she was struggling with.”
Totally unrecognisable in the role thanks to make-up and a prosthetic nose, Kidman is already being tipped to receive another Oscar nomination for her extraordinary performance, something that Daldry firmly endorses.
“Nicole is a movie star, but unlike a number of movie stars, she is a transforming actress,” he says. “The combination is incredibly rare. The fact that she manages to make such a transformation in this role confirms her as possibly one of the major actors of her generation. It is an unusual and brilliant skill.”
Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Virginia Woolf represents big steps for the actor, professionally and personally, writes Phillip McCarthy.
The big buzz about Nicole Kidman’s turn in The Hours is that she so thoroughly transforms herself into her character, the iconic 20th-century literary figure Virginia Woolf, that a lot of people who see the movie don’t even realise it’s her.
To capture the suicidal, early 20th-century writer, she deepens and darkens her voice, she slows her leggy gait to a hesitant shuffle, she wears dowdy clothes and gray flat hair and, most controversially, she dons a prosthetic nose.
The net effect is that, in the midst of the awards season, Kidman is basking in the accolade of being not just a movie star but an actor’s actor.
Could Julia or Meg, so the buzz goes, so completely immerse themselves in a character?
Given that The Hours is a prestige project with a huge amount of Oscar heat to it – Kidman has already got a slew of critics’ awards and a Golden Globe best actress gong for it – it makes for a pretty powerful calling card at the Academy after last year’s Moulin Rouge and The Others.
“I became pretty obsessed with her,” Kidman says.
“During the filming in the English countryside, I lived in this little cottage in Richmond and I spent a lot time reading her work and listening to tapes of her voice. I was in a fairly solitary state of mind at the time so it made sense.
“What the movie is about is how a writer can impact you, even if she’s dead, and I found that out in a very personal way as I looked into her relationships and what she wrote.
