Background

Ethnicity: Kidman's ancestry includes Irish, Scottish and English heritage.

Kidman was born 20 June 1967, in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were temporarily in the United States on student visas. Her father was Antony Kidman (1938–2014), a biochemist, clinical psychologist and author, who died of a heart attack in Singapore aged 75. Her mother, Janelle Ann (née Glenny), is a nursing instructor who edited her husband's books and was a member of the Women's Electoral Lobby.

Being born in Hawaii, she was given the Hawaiian name "Hōkūlani". The inspiration for the name came from a baby elephant born around the same time at the Honolulu Zoo, but the name is also a commonly used Hawaiian name for girls, Hokulani meaning 'Heavenly Star'.

At the time of Kidman's birth, her father was a graduate student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He became a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health of the United States. Opposed to the war in Vietnam, Kidman's parents participated in anti-war protests while living in Washington, D.C. The family returned to Australia when Kidman was four and her mother now lives on Sydney's North Shore. Kidman has a younger sister, Antonia Kidman, a journalist and TV presenter.

Education

Kidman attended Lane Cove Public School and North Sydney Girls' High School. She was enrolled in ballet at three and showed her natural talent for acting in her primary and high school years. She says that she was first inspired to become an actress upon seeing Margaret Hamilton's performance as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Kidman has revealed that she was timid as a child, saying, "I am very shy – really shy – I even had a stutter as a kid, which I slowly got over, but I still regress into that shyness. So I don't like walking into a crowded restaurant by myself; I don't like going to a party by myself." She went on to study at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.

She initially studied at the Phillip Street Theatre in Sydney. At Philip Street, Kidman studied alongside Naomi Watts who had attended the same high school. She also attended the Australian Theatre for Young People. Here she took up drama, mime and performing in her teens, finding acting to be a refuge. Owing to her fair skin and naturally red hair, the Australian sun forced the young Kidman to rehearse in halls of the theatre. A regular at the Phillip Street Theatre, she received both encouragement and praise to pursue acting full-time.

Career

Nicole launched her acting career as a teenager. She appeared in made-for-television films and miniseries during her adolescence and debuted as a lead actress in the thriller Dead Calm (1989). The offer of a role in Days of Thunder (1990) drew her to the United States. Over the next decade Kidman appeared in a dozen films. Her roles included a gangster-loving socialite in Billy Bathgate (1991), an aspiring television journalist in the black comedy To Die For (1995), and an American living in Europe during the 1800s in the 1996 screen adaptation of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady.

In 1998 Kidman made her stage debut in London, playing five different roles in Sir David Hare’s The Blue Room, a well-received series of vignettes based on Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde. In early 1999 she transferred with the play to New York City for her Broadway debut. That year also saw the release of Eyes Wide Shut, which was an adaptation of another Schnitzler work and was the final film by director Stanley Kubrick. Although billed as a steamy romance featuring real-life couple Kidman and Cruise, it bowed to mixed reviews and disappointing box-office numbers.

Kidman quickly rebounded, however, with a series of diverse roles that highlighted the range of her talent. In the Baz Luhrmann musical fantasy Moulin Rouge! (2001), she starred as a dying courtesan, and the performance earned Kidman her first Academy Award nomination. In 2001 she also appeared in The Others, an atmospheric horror film, and the dark comedy Birthday Girl, in which she played a Russian mail-order bride. Two years later she earned an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002), an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham. A string of critical successes followed, including Dogville (2003), The Human Stain (2003), Cold Mountain (2003), and Margot at the Wedding (2007).

In 2007 Kidman starred as the coolly menacing Mrs. Coulter in The Golden Compass, an adaptation of Philip Pullman’s controversial fantasy novel. She reteamed with Luhrmann for the romantic drama Australia (2008), playing a prim Englishwoman who arrives in Australia just after World War II to defend land she has inherited. In 2009 she appeared in Nine; the musical featured an all-star cast that included Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, and Marion Cotillard.

The following year Kidman portrayed a grieving mother in Rabbit Hole, a film adaptation of David Lindsay-Abaire’s acclaimed play; for her performance, she received a third Academy Award nomination. She subsequently took a role as a catty rival of Jennifer Aniston’s character in the romantic comedy Just Go with It (2011). In the thriller Trespass (2011), Kidman and Nicolas Cage played a married couple whose home is invaded by thieves. In 2012 she starred as the writer Martha Gellhorn, who was briefly married to Ernest Hemingway, in the HBO movie Hemingway & Gellhorn, and she vamped as the fiancée of a death-row inmate in 1960s Florida in the pulp drama The Paperboy. In the psychological horror film Stoker (2013), Kidman appeared as the emotionally distant mother of a troubled teenage girl.

In 2013 Kidman starred opposite Colin Firth in The Railway Man, an adaptation of a memoir about a former soldier who is seeking the Japanese translator who tortured him while he was held captive during World War II. Kidman teamed with Firth again in the thriller Before I Go to Sleep (2014), about a woman dealing with memory loss induced by a trauma. In 2015 she played both a taxidermist intent on skinning the title character in Paddington, an adaptation of the classic children’s book series about a Peruvian bear in London, and a deputy district attorney in Secret in Their Eyes, a thriller that also starred Julia Roberts as an FBI agent whose daughter is raped and murdered.

Kidman’s credits from 2016 included the biopic Lion, about an Indian boy who becomes separated from his family, is adopted by an Australian couple, and later, as an adult, searches for his lost relatives. The drama received critical acclaim, and Kidman earned her fourth Oscar nomination. In 2017 she appeared as an abused wife in the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies, an adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s best-selling novel. For her performance, Kidman won an Emmy Award. That year she also appeared in the second season of Jane Campion’s TV series Top of the Lake. Kidman’s film roles in 2017 included the headmistress of a Southern boarding school in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled, which was based on a novel by Thomas Cullinan; the wife of a heart surgeon in the psychological thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer; and a band manager in the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s short story How to Talk to Girls at Parties.

Achievements

• 

  With a long list of awards, honors and achievements in her kitty including the Australia's top civil honor the Companion of the Order of Australia, one Academy Award, three Golden Globe awards and one BAFTA, Nicole Kidman is undoubtedly one of the reigning actress that Hollywood takes pride in. An actress by profession and a philanthropist by heart, Kidman is an iconic figure that the world looks up to. Over the years, Kidman has been a part of some of the best Hollywood flicks and has contributed heavily for the success of each of them including, ‘Batman Forever’, ‘To Die For’, ‘Moulin Rouge’, ‘The Others’, ‘The Hours’ and so on.
  
  In 2003, Kidman received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In addition to her 2003 Academy Award for Best Actress, Kidman has received Best Actress awards from the following critics' groups or award-granting organisations: the Hollywood Foreign Press (Golden Globes), the Australian Film Institute, Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, Empire Awards, Golden Satellite Awards, Hollywood Film Festival, London Critics Circle, Russian Guild of Film Critics, and the Southeastern Film Critics Association. Kidman also received recognition from the National Association of Theatre Owners at the ShoWest Convention in 1992 as the Female Star of Tomorrow, and in 2002 for a Distinguished Decade of Achievement in Film. In 2003, she was given the American Cinematheque Award.

Works

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  • BMX Bandits 1983
  • Windrider 1986
  • Emerald City 1988
  • Dead Calm 1989
  • Days of Thunder 1990
  • Flirting 1991
  • Billy Bathgate 1991
  • Far and Away 1992
  • Malice 1993
  • My Life 1993
  • Batman Forever 1995
  • To Die For 1995
  • Portrait of a Lady 1996
  • The Peacemaker 1997
  • Practical Magic 1998
  • Eyes Wide Shut 1999
  • Moulin Rouge 2001
  • The Others 2001
  • Birthday Girl 2001
  • The Hours 2002
  • Dogville 2003
  • In The Cut 2003
  • Human Stain 2003
  • Cold Mountain 2003
  • The Stepford Wives 2004
  • Birth 2004
  • The Interpreter 2005
  • Bewitched 2005
  • Fur 2006
  • Happy Feet 2006
  • The Invasion 2007
  • Margot at the Wedding 2007
  • The Golden Compass 2007
  • Australia 2008
  • Nine 2009
  • Rabbit Hole 2010
  • Just Go With It 2011
  • Trespass 2011
  • Monte Carlo - Producer 2011
  • The Paperboy 2012
  • Stoker 2013
  • The Railway Man 2013
  • Grace of Monaco 2014
  • Before I Go To Sleep 2014
  • Paddington 2014
  • Strangerland 2015
  • Queen of the Desert 2015
  • The Family Fang 2015
  • Secret in Their Eyes 2015
  • Genius 2016
  • Lion 2016
  • How To Talk To Girls At Parties 2017
  • The Killing of a Sacred Deer 2017
  • The Beguiled 2017
  • Big Little Lies - Season 1 2017

Religion

Kidman is Catholic. She attended Mary Mackillop Chapel in North Sydney. Following criticism of The Golden Compass by Catholic leaders as anti-Catholic, Kidman told Entertainment Weekly that the Catholic Church is part of her "essence", and that her religious beliefs would prevent her from taking a role in a film she perceived as anti-Catholic. During her divorce from Tom Cruise, she stated that she did not want their children raised as Scientologists. She has been reluctant to discuss Scientology since her divorce. In 2014, Kidman said she had been practising Transcendental Meditation since her early twenties.

Politics

Kidman is a dual citizen (U.S. and Australia), so she’s invested in U.S. politics. Since 1994, she’s given $25,500 to Democratic candidates and organizations. Perhaps her most notable donations were to Hillary Clinton’s 2000 U.S. senate campaign.

Views

On the world stage, Kidman has been a tireless activist for downtrodden women, having become an ambassador to the United Nations’ Development Fund for Women. In her role for the U.N., Kidman has traveled the world, from war-torn countries to Europe’s most affluent nations to champion women’s rights and alleviate women’s suffering.

Quotations: "You don't have to be naked to be sexy."

"When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness."

"I think it's important that we don't all have to hold our heads high all the time saying everything's fine."

"Even from a very early age, I knew I didn't want to miss out on anything life had to offer just because it might be considered dangerous."

"I believe that as much as you take, you have to give back. It's important not to focus on yourself too much."

"What's the point of doing something good if nobody's watching."

"I have a different approach. I don't file lawsuits because I really don't care."

"I never knew I'd be in a musical, let alone win an award for one."

"I think I would be very sad if I wasn't able to have a baby."

"Stay out of the sun, because it is the worst thing in terms of aging. I'm very medical. I come from a medical family."

Personality

Nicole scored an IQ of 132+. She is scared of butterflies (lepidopterophobia). Curiously snakes and spiders don't faze her.

Good friends with Renée Zellweger, Jim Carrey, Russell Crowe and Meryl Streep. She also became good friends with Daniel Craig. In 2014 she revealed that whenever he goes to Australia, he always stays at her house. Was close friends with Lauren Bacall. She considered Bacall to be her "American Mother".

Nicole loved wearing the prosthetic nose, that she originally used in The Hours (2002) and wore it in private too, mainly as she was undergoing a divorce from Tom Cruise at the time and was attracting a lot of paparazzi interest. Much to her delight, by wearing her fake nose out and about, she found she could easily evade the paparazzi as they didn't recognize her.

Physical Characteristics: Weight: 58 kg (128 pounds)

Height in feet: 5’11”(180 cm)

Measurements: 34-23-36 in or 86-58.5-91.5 cm

She is very a tall woman at nearly 5' 11", she actually stood about 4 inches taller than ex-husband Tom Cruise, and rarely wore heels when seen publicly with him so that they could appear similar in height. Since their divorce, she is rarely seen on the red carpet without high heels, and she often meets 6' 4" actors in the eye. She was already 5' 9" when she was age 13.

Although naturally left-handed, she taught herself to write right-handed for her role in The Hours (2002), where she played the right-handed author Virginia Woolf.

She is highly conscious of avoiding excessive sun exposure, and is rarely seen during her downtime without a hat, sunglasses and wearing sunscreen. In fact, best friend Naomi Watts has said that "Nicole won't cross the street without a hat."

She is allergic to strawberries.

She developed shortsightedness in 1998 and had laser treatment to rectify the problem. Usually wears contact lenses but wears glasses on occasions.

Quotes from others about the person

• Zac Efron said that shooting the improvised dance scene with her in The Paperboy (2012), was "the day he became a man".

Interests

• She said that if she had not been an actress, she would have been a doctor.
  
  Some of her favorite movies are Gone with the Wind (1939), Breaking the Waves (1996), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Grease (1978), Rear Window (1954) and The Way We Were (1973).
  
  She often teaches herself various skills for different roles. Among them, she knows how to twirl and throw knives, due to her role in Paddington (2014), for which she also took a taxidermy class as part of her preparation.
  
  Sharks are one of her passions and to shark-dive is one of her favorite activities. She considers sharks to be "beautiful". She has a skydiving license.

• Politicians

  Hillary Clinton

• Writers

  She likes the poetry of Anne Carson and the writing of Philip Larkin.
  
  She writes short stories in her free time and hopes to publish them one day. She revealed in June 2014 that she's also working on her first screenplay for a feature film.

• Artists

  She is a fan of actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and her film Bride and Prejudice (2004). Nicole got to meet Aishwarya for the first time at the 2005 Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world dinner held in New York City.

• Sport & Clubs

  The Aussie actress's father was a marathon runner, so a love of jogging runs through her veins. Rather than grow bored on a treadmill, though, she prefers to run in the woods when she's home in Nashville. "And in Sydney you've got the beach, which is absolutely beautiful to run on," Kidman told Women's Health. Beyond that, she's tried organized sports, yoga, and spin.

• Music & Bands

  She is a pianist, and did her own piano-playing in Cold Mountain (2003).
  
  Kidman revealed an unlikely favorite song to Women's Health: Britney Spears' "Work Bitch." She'll mix in anything old-school, too. "I love 'Sweet Child O' Mine,'" she's said.

Connections

Kidman has been married twice: previously to actor Tom Cruise, and currently to country singer Keith Urban. She has an adopted son and daughter with Cruise as well as two biological daughters with Urban. Kidman met Cruise in November 1989, while filming Days of Thunder, they were married on Christmas Eve 1990 in Telluride, Colorado. The couple adopted a daughter, Isabella Jane (born 1992), and a son, Connor Anthony (born 1995). On 5 February 2001, the couple's spokesperson announced their separation. Cruise filed for divorce two days later, and the marriage was dissolved in August of that year, with Cruise citing irreconcilable differences. In a 2007 interview with Marie Claire, Kidman noted the incorrect reporting of the ectopic pregnancy early in her marriage. "It was wrongly reported as miscarriage, by everyone who picked up the story." "So it's huge news, and it didn't happen."

In the June 2006 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, she said she still loved Cruise: "He was huge; still is. To me, he was just Tom, but to everybody else, he is huge. But he was lovely to me and I loved him. I still love him." In addition, she has expressed shock about their divorce. In 2015, former Church of Scientology executive Mark Rathbun claimed in a documentary film that he was instructed to "facilitate (Cruise's) break-up with Nicole Kidman". Cruise's auditor further claimed Kidman had been wiretapped on Cruise's suggestion.

Prior to marrying Cruise, Kidman had been involved in relationships with Australian actor Marcus Graham and Windrider (1986) co-star Tom Burlinson. She was also said to be involved with Adrien Brody. The film Cold Mountain brought rumours that an affair between Kidman and co-star Jude Law was responsible for the break-up of his marriage. Both denied the allegations, and Kidman won an undisclosed sum from the British tabloids that published the story. She met musician Lenny Kravitz in 2003, and dated him into 2004. Robbie Williams confirmed he had a short romance with Kidman on her yacht in summer 2004.

In a 2007 Vanity Fair interview, Kidman revealed that she had been secretly engaged to someone prior to her present relationship to New Zealand-Australian country singer Keith Urban, whom she met at G'Day LA, an event honouring Australians, in January 2005. Kidman married Urban on 25 June 2006, at Cardinal Cerretti Memorial Chapel in the grounds of St Patrick's Estate, Manly in Sydney. In an interview in 2015, Kidman said, "We didn't really know each other – we got to know each other during our marriage." They maintain homes in Sydney, Sutton Forest (New South Wales, Australia), Los Angeles, and Nashville (Tennessee, USA). The couple's first daughter was born in 2008, in Nashville. In 2010, Kidman and Urban had their second daughter via surrogacy at Nashville's Centennial Women's Hospital. In an interview by Tina Brown at the 2015 Women in the World conference, she stated that her attention turned to her career after her divorce from Cruise: "Out of my divorce came work that was applauded so that was an interesting thing for me", leading to her Academy Award in 2003.

Father:

Antony David Kidman

(10 December 1938 – 12 September 2014)

He was an Australian psychologist, biochemist and academic. He was the father of actress Nicole Kidman.

Mother:

Janelle Ann

She is a nursing instructor who edited her husband's books and was a member of the Women's Electoral Lobby.

Sister:

Antonia Kidman

(born 14 July 1970)

She is an Australian journalist and TV presenter, and the younger sister of the actress Nicole Kidman.

Spouse (1):

Tom Cruise

(born July 3, 1962)

He is an American actor and producer.

Spouse (2):

Keith Urban

(born 26 October 1967)

He is a New Zealand country music singer, musician, songwriter, and record producer.

adopted son:

Connor Cruise

(born January 17, 1995, Florida, United States)

adopted daughter:

Isabella Jane Cruise

(born December 22, 1992, Miami, Florida, United States)

Daughter:

Faith Margaret Kidman Urban

(born 2010)

Daughter:

Sunday Rose Kidman Urban

(born 2008)

Collegue :

Daniel Day-Lewis

(born 29 April 1957)

He is a retired English actor who holds both British and Irish citizenship.

Partner:

Robbie Williams

(born 13 February 1974)

He is an English singer, songwriter and actor.

Partner:

Lenny Kravitz

(born May 26, 1964)

He is an American singer, songwriter, actor and record producer.

Friend:

Meryl Streep

(born June 22, 1949)

She is an American actress.

Friend:

Russell Crowe

(born 7 April 1964)

He is an actor, film producer and musician.

Friend:

Renée Zellweger

(born April 25, 1969)

She is an American actress and producer.

Friend:

Lauren Bacall

(September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014)

She was an American actress known for her distinctive voice and sultry looks.

References

• Nicole Kidman: Anatomy of an Actor
  2016
• Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life
  2014
• Nicole Kidman
  2008
• Nicole Kidman (Film Stars)
  2012
• Nicole Kidman: The Biography
  2003
• Nicole Kidman
  2003
• Nicole Kidman: Australian Beauty Queen
  2017