Nicole Kidman recently sat down for an interview with W Magazine. Here are some highlights from that interview:
What was the first professional job you auditioned for?
"The first professional job was Bush Christmas, which was a film I did in Australia. I was 14, it was shooting out in the bush in Queensland, and I got to eat witchetty grubs. Do you know what witchetty grubs are? They are worms that live in the earth, and they're a milky white color, and I eat them in the film."
You eat them?
"And I wanted to eat them. I was excited to do that. I'm one of those people. I could go on Survivor and I wouldn't be good at the climbing and all of the physical stuff, but I could eat anything. Just so you know. That's my secret skill. Give me a cockroach, I'll eat it! Spider, I'll eat it! You name it, I've tried it. I'm adventurous."
Definitely, and I just wonder where it started because I think of you as a pure artist, and I mean that as the highest compliment, because to me, it's not just eating worms. You just will throw yourself into anything. Even your most recent work, Big Little Lies. Were you always fearless as an artist, even in the start?
"I don't see myself as fearless. I actually see myself as being fearful at times, probably because I experience fear but I kind of just walk through it. I did a play in London recently, and that was really debilitating fear, and every day I just had to go, Okay, get through it.' I had pure stage fright on the side of the stage where I would have rapid heartbeat and that was frightening, but it was one of those things of just going, 'I just have to work through this,' and I think I've just always been compelled to do that. And I have an enormous amount of trust, probably to my detriment. I still, at this stage in my life and my career, implicitly trust, and that's probably where the desire to be a part of something and the desire to contribute and not have my own inhibitions or my own censorship stop something or stop the artistic vision for a director or a story. Big Little Lies for me was so complicated, and that's what was so beautiful about it. And that Jean-Marc Vallée was willing to hold [his distance]—there's one scene where he plays it pretty much in a two shot on Alex [Skarsgård] and I, and [Vallée] trusted that and he trusted he didn't need to come in close, he just allowed it to play out with all of the interaction between us. That's really something for a director using the small screen medium. And Alex and I worked very hard on creating the dynamic of that marriage."
I mean, I know this is a technical question and it sounds like I'm being salacious, but I'm not. Wasn't it very difficult to do those scenes basically naked?
"When I would go home, I would feel ashamed, and that's the same emotions and the same feelings that Celeste was having, so we were very much parallel in the feelings, but I was willing to do that for the role because that's what I felt was important for the role. When I talk about not censoring myself through my own inhibitions and not then affecting a story or a character because of my own inhibitions, I'm here to tell the story and to be true to the art, not to bring my own problems in terms of what I feel comfortable with, not comfortable with. I've got to go work that stuff out so that I can come as a pure vessel to the work, if that makes sense."
I totally get it, but I just think the vulnerability of that performance is so profound because it's not like you're doing it in a wetsuit.
"And I felt very exposed and vulnerable and deeply humiliated at times. I mean, I remember lying on the floor in the bathroom at the very end when we were doing the scenes in episode 7, and I was lying on the floor and I just wouldn't get up in-between takes. I was just lying there, sort of broken and crying, and I remember at one point Jean-Marc coming over and just sort of placing a towel over me because I was just lying there in half-torn underwear and just basically on the ground with nothing on and I was just, like [gasps]. But at times I would have flashes of images of women that have gone through this and I'm like, 'This is authentic, this is the truth and this is what I have to do, and it would just come through like that.' But it was beautifully written, I have to say, and Jean-Marc is an exquisite director because he was able to modulate it and allow it to be and to grow and see and then sort of paste it together, you know."
Read the full interview at W Magazine.
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