49 Fun Facts About Nicole Kidman

In which US state was Nicole Kidman born?

Hawaii: her Australian parents were in Honolulu on student visas when she was born in 1967, which is why she holds both Australian and US citizenship.

Kidman played a villainous taxidermist in which family film?

Paddington: Kidman's Millicent Clyde, a Natural History Museum taxidermist, hunts the bear from Peru across London to add him to her collection.

Which country singer did Kidman marry in Sydney in 2006?

Keith Urban met Kidman at a 2005 Los Angeles gala honouring Australians and married her in Sydney the next year. She filed for divorce in 2025.

Kidman played which Hollywood star in a 2014 biopic that opened the Cannes Film Festival?

Grace Kelly: Grace of Monaco opened Cannes, but her children called it inaccurate, and in the US it skipped cinemas to premiere on the Lifetime cable network.

Which actress befriended Kidman in their teens and later joined her in Flirting (1991)?

Naomi Watts met Kidman at an audition for a swimsuit advert that neither of them got. Kidman paid for a taxi to take her new friend home, and the two have been close ever since.

Kidman's 1983 film debut was a remake of which 1947 Australian classic?

Bush Christmas: at 16 Kidman played a farm girl whose family's racehorse is stolen by thieves. BMX Bandits, with Kidman on a bike, came out the same year.

Which 1987 miniseries won Kidman her first Australian Film Institute Award?

Vietnam: Kidman played a schoolgirl opposed to the war her brother is conscripted to fight. Its producers, Kennedy Miller, then cast her in Dead Calm.

Who played the menacing castaway opposite Kidman in Dead Calm (1989)?

Billy Zane played the stranger who seizes the couple's yacht, with Sam Neill as her husband. Within a year the thriller had carried Kidman to Hollywood and Days of Thunder.

In Days of Thunder, Kidman's doctor falls for a driver in which racing series?

NASCAR: Kidman played neurosurgeon Claire Lewicki, who falls for Tom Cruise's stock-car rookie. The two co-stars married within months of the film's release.

Which 1991 film opposite Dustin Hoffman earned Kidman her first Golden Globe nomination?

Billy Bathgate: Kidman played Drew Preston, the society mistress of gangster Dutch Schultz. The film took under $16 million against a $48 million budget, yet it won her a supporting-actress nomination.

Who directed Kidman and Tom Cruise in the 1992 Irish epic Far and Away?

Ron Howard cast the then-married stars as Irish immigrants who end up racing for a claim in the Oklahoma land run of 1893. It was the second of their three films together.

Who wore the cowl opposite Kidman's Dr. Chase Meridian in Batman Forever?

Val Kilmer wore the cowl only this once: the film was a hit, yet George Clooney replaced him in the sequel amid reports of clashes with director Joel Schumacher.

Who directed Kidman as murderous newscaster Suzanne Stone in To Die For?

Gus Van Sant directed the black comedy, in which her small-town weather presenter seduces a teenager into murdering her husband. It won Kidman her first Golden Globe.

Who played Kidman's fellow witch sister in Practical Magic (1998)?

Sandra Bullock played Sally to Kidman's Gillian, sisters under a family curse that dooms any man they love. Both returned to the roles in a 2026 sequel, 28 years later.

Which 1998 David Hare play earned Kidman a Laurence Olivier nomination in London?

The Blue Room: Kidman played five characters in Hare's version of Schnitzler's La Ronde at the Donmar Warehouse, and the production carried her on to her Broadway debut.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) was the final film of which director?

Stanley Kubrick died in March 1999, six days after showing Warner Bros. his final cut, so he never saw the film open that July with Kidman and Tom Cruise.

Who played Kidman's love interest in Moulin Rouge! (2001)?

Ewan McGregor won the part of the lovestruck writer after Leonardo DiCaprio tried singing for the director and, by his own account, it didn't go too well.

Where is Kidman's haunted house set in The Others (2001)?

The Channel Islands: the manor stands on Jersey just after the Second World War, and Kidman's character keeps every curtain drawn because sunlight could kill her two children.

Kidman won the Best Actress Oscar for playing which writer in The Hours?

Virginia Woolf: the role made Kidman the first Australian to win Best Actress. With the Iraq War days old, she told the audience she had come "because art is important".

For The Hours (2002), Kidman wore a prosthetic on which facial feature?

Nose: the false nose was meant to bring her closer to the novelist's looks. The Guardian mocked "Nicole and her Big Fake Schnoz", yet the performance won her an Oscar.

Which director's Dogville (2003) put Kidman on a bare soundstage?

Lars von Trier marked out the town's houses in chalk on a sound-stage floor, with a few doors and chairs for props. For the sequel, Manderlay, Kidman's role went to another actress.

Kidman's Ada Monroe in Cold Mountain falls in love during which conflict?

American Civil War: Ada, a preacher's daughter in North Carolina, waits while Jude Law's wounded Confederate deserter makes the long journey home to her.

Kidman and Will Ferrell won a Razzie for Worst Screen Couple for which film?

Bewitched: Nora Ephron's comedy cast Kidman as a real witch who is hired to play Samantha in a remake of the 1960s sitcom, opposite Ferrell's vain actor.

Kidman became the face of which fragrance in a Baz Luhrmann-directed campaign?

Chanel No. 5: the 2004 spot, with couture by Karl Lagerfeld, was reported as the most expensive advert ever made. Chanel's publicist insisted it was "a film, not an advert".

Which star replaced Kidman in the thriller Panic Room?

Jodie Foster stepped in after Kidman, two weeks into the shoot, found that the knee she had hurt filming Moulin Rouge! could not take the thriller's physical work.

Which Prince song did Kidman record for the 2006 animated film Happy Feet?

Kiss: Prince insisted on watching the film before he would license the song, then within a week wrote the penguins a new one of his own, which won a Golden Globe.

Which antagonist did Kidman play in The Golden Compass (2007)?

Marisa Coulter: Kidman at first turned the villain down, and signed on only after the novel's author, Philip Pullman, who wanted her for the part, wrote her a personal letter.

Who starred opposite Kidman in Baz Luhrmann's Australia (2008)?

Hugh Jackman took the Drover's part in 2006 in place of Russell Crowe, the director's first choice; Heath Ledger had been reported as the replacement in between.

Kidman played the muse of Daniel Day-Lewis's blocked film director in which 2009 musical?

Nine: Kidman's Claudia sings "Unusual Way", then tells the director she cannot keep playing the same part in his films. The story is taken from Fellini's 8½.

In The Paperboy (2012), which co-star played Jack, who becomes infatuated with Kidman's Charlotte Bless?

Zac Efron: his Jack falls for Charlotte while she chases a death-row inmate she knows only from letters. Twelve years later the pair reunited for the romantic comedy A Family Affair.

In which 2013 Park Chan-wook film did Kidman play an unstable mother?

Stoker: in the South Korean director's English-language debut, Kidman's newly widowed Evelyn welcomes her husband's mysterious brother into the house, to her daughter's alarm.

Which scientist did Kidman play in the 2015 West End play Photograph 51?

Rosalind Franklin: the title is an X-ray image made in her lab that pointed to DNA's double helix. The part won Kidman the Evening Standard's best-actress award.

Big Little Lies is based on a novel by which author?

Liane Moriarty: Kidman has since brought two more of the Australian novelist's books to the screen, starring in one of them as the guru of a wellness retreat.

Who was Kidman's co-star and fellow executive producer on Big Little Lies?

Reese Witherspoon and Kidman optioned the bestseller together in 2014, before it had a network. Kidman went on to win Emmys both for her acting and as a producer.

Who directed Kidman's headmistress Martha Farnsworth in The Beguiled (2017)?

Sofia Coppola became only the second woman to win Best Director at Cannes with it. A wounded enemy soldier shelters in the girls' school, and the women end by turning on him.

Who directed Kidman in the 2017 thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer?

Yorgos Lanthimos cast her as the wife of a heart surgeon who is told he must kill one of his own family. It was one of three Kidman films at Cannes that year, and the jury gave her a special prize.

Which character, the hero's mother, did Kidman play in Aquaman (2018)?

Atlanna, queen of Atlantis, washes ashore in a storm, falls in love with the man who rescues her and has his son, the future Aquaman. Kidman returned to the role in the 2023 sequel.

Which journalist did Kidman portray in Bombshell (2019)?

Gretchen Carlson was fired by Fox News and sued its chairman, Roger Ailes, for sexual harassment; the film follows how her case brought him down. Charlize Theron played Megyn Kelly.

Who played Kidman's husband, the murder suspect, in HBO's The Undoing?

Hugh Grant played Jonathan Fraser, the cancer doctor whose arrest for murder unravels his therapist wife's life. The series is adapted from the novel You Should Have Known.

Who played Desi Arnaz opposite Kidman's Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos?

Javier Bardem's Desi stands by Kidman's Lucy through one turbulent week in which she is publicly accused of being a communist. Both stars earned Oscar nominations.

Which prize did Babygirl earn Kidman at the 2024 Venice Film Festival?

Volpi Cup for Best Actress: Kidman reached Venice only to learn that her mother had died, so her director accepted the prize and read out her message: "This award is for her."

Which cinema chain's advert had Kidman declare that "heartbreak feels good in a place like this"?

AMC Theatres asked her to help win audiences back after the pandemic. The script's writer says he dashed it off in an hour, and calls that sentence the best line he ever wrote.

Kidman and Tom Cruise married on Christmas Eve 1990 in a ski town in which state?

Colorado: the two exchanged vows at sunset in Telluride with almost nobody but family present, about a year after they met on the set of Days of Thunder.

Which NHL team was Kidman seen cheering on during the 2017 Stanley Cup Final?

Nashville Predators: Kidman was then living in Nashville with her country-star husband, and the couple were seen roaring on their home team against Pittsburgh.

Kidman's UK number one 'Somethin' Stupid' was a duet with whom?

Robbie Williams asked her to sing on his swing album after admiring her in Moulin Rouge! Their Sinatra cover entered the UK chart at the top and was 2001's Christmas number one.

Kidman earned an Oscar nomination as the adoptive mother of a lost Indian boy in which 2016 film?

Lion: Kidman, who has two adopted children of her own, played the Australian woman who raised Saroo before he set out as an adult to find the family he had lost.

In 2024 Kidman became the first Australian actor to receive which honour?

AFI Life Achievement Award: Meryl Streep, her co-star in The Hours, presented it. "I'm an Aussie girl, and I'm standing here in Hollywood," Kidman told the room.

The Peacemaker (1997), starring Kidman as a nuclear expert, was the first film released by which new studio?

DreamWorks launched with this thriller, in which Kidman's White House scientist and an army colonel race to stop a stolen nuclear warhead from destroying Manhattan.

The Interpreter (2005), with Kidman in the title role, was the first feature film shot inside which headquarters?

The United Nations had never let a feature film shoot inside until Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed, after long talks with the director. Kidman plays a UN interpreter who overhears an assassination plot.