Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life

by James L. Dickerson

  He voices surprise that they were even invited to the wedding. Forget it—I’ll probably be dead by then anyway.”

  “Great—then you’ll have the perfect excuse for not showing up.”

  Nicole has a few great lines in the film, but her character is so underdeveloped that her performance often seems flat and uninspired. She has appeared in very few films in which she did not develop a strong on-screen chemistry with the leading man. For whatever reason—her marriage to Tom could have been a factor—she and Keaton never connected. That combined with direction to recite their lines in a near whisper proved fatal for the film’s artistic vision.

  When My Life was released, reviews were mixed. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert thought parts of the movie were good, but he did not like the way the humor and seriousness of the story were contrived into juxtaposition. “[It] should be a more rigorous and single-minded film,” he wrote. “Maybe it started that way, before getting spoonfuls of honey to make the medicine go down. If a character invites us to join him on the most important journey of his life—to parenthood and death—then he shouldn’t distract us with little side trips to schtick and funny business.”

  A Rolling Stone reviewer could not wait to twist the knife in the corpse: “There’s potential in a movie about a professional deceiver who gets slammed with some scummy facts about who he is by trying to sell an idealized version of himself to his child. Keaton could have played the hell out of that role. But Rubin swallows Bob’s PR campaign and then asks us to swallow it, too. No sale.”

  By all accounts, Nicole was upset over the reviews, not just the negative ones, but even the positive ones that made her realize how limited her character had been in the film. Always insecure about her physical appearance, she concluded that she was not leading lady material. All a leading lady had to do was simply project the right image—at least that was the prevailing wisdom of the day in Tinseltown. Nicole did not see that quality in herself. Her true talent, she decided, was as a character actress, someone who projected different images for different roles.

  Nicole had tried to be a “star” opposite Tom in Days of Thunder and Far and Away –and she had tried it with Alec Baldwin in Malice and Michael Keaton in My Life—and the results had all been the same . . . a big zero. How could she have fallen so far since the intoxicating victory of Dead Calm? Convinced that her film career in America was going nowhere, she thought about returning to Australia. If she had not been happily married to Tom, she surely would have done so.

  Unable to flee to Australia and unwilling to stumble into more dead-end roles, where she was expected to shine as a “movie star,” she decided to rethink her career. “I took time off and evaluated why I was an actor, and why I was here, and what I wanted to do,” she told the Boston Globe. “I didn’t realize when I made Far and Away how much I would then be defined and judged in relation to [Tom].”

  The solution, she determined, was to focus more on independent films, where women historically have been able to explore stimulating new territory as character actresses.

  ~ ~ ~

  If 1993 was a bad year for Nicole, other than the adoption of Isabella, it was a terrific year for Tom, who signed on to do an unusual—for him, at least—role in Interview with the Vampire, based on Anne Rice’s best-selling novel. He also wrapped up production on The Firm, based on John Grisham’s best-selling novel. For a while that year, Tom was the cinematic darling—or antichrist, depending on how you looked at it—of America’s popular literary establishment.

  The Firm was based on Grisham’s novel about a Memphis law firm and its flirtations with organized crime. It was something the Arkansas-born author knew a little something about, having practiced law in a small Mississippi community just south of Memphis. Although travel magazines promote the city as a center for music, barbecue, and everything Elvis, Memphis has been an organized crime center since the 1920s. Grisham’s yarn is fiction, but it is also true in the sense that it is based on activities that have taken place in Memphis for decades and law firms that really do exist.

  Director Sidney Pollack and executive producer Michael Hausman knew nothing about that, of course, so they decided to be true to the book and shoot most of the movie in Memphis, with smaller segments earmarked for Boston and the Cayman Islands. When it came to the script, however, they decided to jazz the story up somewhat. They changed the ending, a decision that gave the movie a different perspective, and they made numerous minor changes in the story Grisham had written.

  One major change they considered was adding a female lawyer to the Memphis law firm joined by Tom’s character, Mitch McDeere, someone who could develop a romance with McDeere and come between him and his wife. Meryl Streep’s name came up first, but then it was decided that they needed someone closer to Tom’s age.

  Rumors circulated that Nicole was promoted for the part. If true, it must have sent the Aussie redhead ballistic. All she needed at that point in her career—to end it—was to make another movie with Tom and play the girlfriend that comes between him and his wife! You could probably have heard Nicole’s screams halfway to Australia. For whatever reason, the idea of “another woman” was eventually dropped.

  When Tom and his co-stars—Gene Hackman, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Hal Holbrook, Wilford Brimley, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, and Gary Busey—arrived in Memphis in the winter of 1992 to begin production, the film company was given the royal treatment by the city—and even by the mobsters they were scripted to unwittingly portray.

  “I’m always on location, but I’ve never been in a city like Memphis where they made it so easy for you and where even your needs were anticipated,” Pollack told Donald La Badie, a writer for The Commercial Appeal. “I never in my life felt so welcome. People knocked themselves out for you. I’ll tell you one thing. It turns out that this Southern hospitality crap isn’t crap—or at least it isn’t in Memphis.”

  Unfortunately, the hospitality was not a two-way transaction. Tim Baker, a cardiovascular consultant for a pharmaceutical company in Memphis, stopped by the set to say hello to his old classmate from St. Xavier Catholic boys school and to ask him to do a public service announcement for a dyslexia school in Little Rock.

  As he stood in line in an attempt to establish contact with Tom, he was mistaken for an extra and told to move along with the others. As he was rounding a corner, he spotted Tom in a director’s chair talking to Pollack. He tried to talk to him, but he could not get close enough. Instead, he wrote out a note and asked a member of the crew to give it to Tom.

  Baker did his work as an extra and went home to wait to hear from Tom. A week later, he received his response in the mail—an autographed photograph of Tom playing softball. The rejection did not seem to bother Baker. “[Dyslexia] is a tough thing to live with,” he told The Commercial Appeal. “Back then, they didn’t know what dyslexia was. Our school was advanced, offering several college courses. For him to do as well as he did (as a dyslexic) is remarkable.” Asked if Tom was popular at St. Xavier’s, he said no: “He was liked but not popular.”

  Filming proceeded without any major delays or problems—Tom’s absence to fly to Florida to help Nicole pick up baby Isabella provided the only behind-the-scenes drama—and wrapped up in late February 1993, after seventy-seven days of filming.

  When The Firm was released in the summer of 1993, reviews were predictable. Jay Carr, writing in the Boston Globe, described Tom as “not an actor of great range,” but one who can become intense when the situation calls for it. “Owing its popularity more to its arrival during a cultural values shift than to literary merit, [The Firm] offers reassurance that there’s moral redemption from the greedy go-go ‘80s,” he continues. “With Cruise as the yuppie Faust—a hotshot lawyer who finds he’s made a deal with the devil by signing on with a rich Memphis law firm fronting for the mob—The Firm doesn’t reach and sustain the tension level of a really first-rate thriller. But neither does it bore you. Although far from fully satisfying, it’s s
lick enough to find ways to make you keep watching it.”

  Joe Brown, writing in the Washington Post, saw merit in the film, almost apologetically. “The Firm looks like just another variation on Cruise’s patented young-hot-shot roles of the past decade," he wrote. "But Cruise has grown substantially as an actor, and The Firm means to expose the underbelly of the amorally acquisitive 1980s.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The effect Tom had on Nicole after they were married was fairly obvious and played up by the entertainment press, which continued to depict her as Mrs. Tom Cruise, the Australian wannabe that became a Hollywood star by virtue of her association with Tom. It was not true, of course, but lies are just as hurtful as the truth sometimes.

  What the entertainment press did not pick up on was the effect Nicole was having on Tom’s career. How could he live with a woman who was so passionate about her craft and not be influenced by her views? Nicole was disillusioned about the Hollywood concept of stardom. Basically, that concept is that people go to movies to see stars be themselves, and not to see great acting. To help her re-focus her career, she enrolled in New York’s Actors Studio, where she was taught the Method technique of acting. The experience uplifted her spirits and made her even more determined to be an actress as opposed to being a ”movie star.”

  Because Nicole was convinced that character acting was the way to go, she influenced Tom’s decision to play the vampire Lestat in Interview with the Vampire. For the first time, Tom would play someone other than himself. He would play a villain, a vampire that killed the innocent to feed his own bloodlust. Tom was tired of playing himself. He wanted what Nicole wanted—the opportunity to portray a character that was totally different than what he was in real life.

  The news that Tom would play Lestat was greeted with vocal opposition by the book’s fans. Author Anne Rice jumped into the fray by telling a reporter that Tom Cruise “is no more my vampire than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler." When the movie was released she changed her mind and praised Tom’s performance.

  Rolling Stone published a review that was typical of most reviews of the film in that it begrudgingly gave Tom credit for his acting abilities. “The movie is hypnotic, scary, sexy, perversely funny and haunting in a way that taps into primal fears,” said the magazine. “It can also be gross, snail paced and grindingly glum. You could say the same things—pro and con—about Rice’s book.”

  No one was more pleased than Nicole, character actor advocate that she was. For the first time, she felt that their marriage had a creative direction. As time went by, more and more people wondered what she planned to do next. She gave a hint early in 1994 when she told Movieline that she would “Loooove to play a sex kitten.” And just so that the tabloid press would not misinterpret that comment, she volunteered to the magazine that she was not a lesbian and she considered Tom to be the best lover she had ever had.

  Nicole in To Die For Photofest

  Chapter 6

  AT LAST, A JUICY ROLE ‘TO DIE FOR’

  Even after Nicole and Tom adopted Isabella, Nicole continued to tell journalists that they were still trying to have a child of their own and she denied that either of them had ever undergone fertility tests. She resented the endless questions about an issue that most couples would consider intimate and beyond the perimeters of entertainment news coverage. If her womb was not private, she wondered—what ever would be?

  Of course, as far as the media were concerned, their fertility was less an issue than Tom’s sexual preference. Those issues were revived in the February issue of McCall’s magazine in a story that quoted a “prominent movie critic” as saying that the actor’s marriage was arranged by his management to halt the gay rumors, while promising Nicole an acting career in return.

  Nicole and Tom were shocked by the story, especially since his ex-wife Mimi Rogers, who had begun the speculation with her comments in Playboy, recanted her previous statements in the January/February issue of Detour magazine, saying “No, he’s not gay. I run into people all the time who tell me that . . . I slept with the man for four years, I should know.” After being contacted by Tom’s lawyers, McCall’s agreed to run an apology in its April issue.

  In February 1995, in the midst of the new gender speculation, Nicole and Tom adopted their second child, an African-American boy who was born on February 6 and placed into their home by mid-month. They named him Connor Antony Kidman Cruise.

  Not long after that, Nicole went on the offensive over the gay issue with an interview that appeared in Vanity Fair magazine, a publication that the previous year had aired Tom’s denials of homosexuality. “I’ll bet all my money I’ve ever made, plus his, that he doesn’t have a mistress, that he doesn’t have a gay lover, that he doesn’t have a gay life,” she said. “We’re both heterosexual. We have a lot of homosexual friends and neither of us would shy away from having a homosexual (movie) role . . . but I take offense if people say I would marry into a marriage of convenience. I think that’s very sexist because they’re saying, ‘She married for fame and money.’”

  But what the magazine offered with one hand, it took away with the other by describing Nicole as a “heat-seeking missile” who pursued her career with “relentlessness.” Nicole was livid. She became convinced that magazines were going to print only what they wanted to print, regardless of what she said.

  Sometime later, in an interview with the friendly Good Weekend, the Sunday supplement of the Sydney Morning Herald, she said: “I do think, and I say this to Tom, that you are judged as a woman in this industry so much more than men. I mean, I live with one of the biggest stars in the world and I know how I’m judged in relation to how he’s judged. His determination is called intensity; my determination is called ambitious to the point of ruthless.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Nicole’s next film role ran counter to what she had been telling reporters for the past year—namely, that she was going to focus on character roles and avoid the glitzy movies that used her for window dressing. To the surprise of everyone, she accepted the role of the licentious Dr. Chase Meridian, a criminal psychologist who spars with Batman in Batman Forever. After everything she had said, why would she want to play a comic book character in the glitziest movie of the year?

  Nicole is very competitive, so the prospect of beating out all-American actress Sandra Bullock for the part may have played a role in her decision. However, a more likely reason can be found in the fact that the movie’s director, Joel Schumacher, was best known for character-driven movies such as St. Elmo’s Fire and Flatliners—and Nicole may have wanted to be cooperative, with the view of landing a role more to her liking somewhere down the road.

  Batman Forever had the look and feel of a box-office smash. In addition to Nicole, the film featured three leading men types—Val Kilmer as Batman, Tommy Lee Jones as Harvey Two-Face, and Jim Carrey as the Riddler—and a supporting cast that included Chris O’Donnell as Robin and the up-and-coming Drew Barrymore as Sugar.

  Kilmer seemed like an unlikely choice to replace Michael Keaton in the title role. His most successful film to date was Top Gun, in which he co-starred with Tom. His performances as Doc Holliday in Tombstone, Elvis in True Romance, and Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors were well received by critics, but they were not the type of roles that projected a traditional leading-man image.

  Batman Forever begins with Two-Face holding a hostage as his hideout is surrounded by cops. After responding to the Bat sign, Batman arrives on the scene and meets Dr. Chase Meridian for the first time. She is elegant and direct, and since Nicole has dyed her hair, she is blonde and forbidding/accessible (depending on her mood).

  In an effort to save the hostage, Batman falls into a trap and is caught in a metal cylinder that is lifted skyward by a helicopter. After several bad moments, he escapes, only to discover that his own temporary capture had allowed Two-Face to escape during all the confusion.

  Back in his straight life as industrialist Bruce Wayne, he turns down Edward
Nygma’s request for a go-ahead on daring new brain research. Frustrated by the rejection, Nygma transforms himself into The Riddler and devises a plan to get even.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Meridian, having decided that she has a personal interest in Batman, summons him with the bat sign. When he realizes there is no emergency, Batman chastises her for misusing the bat signal. “You called me here for this? The bat signal is not a beeper.”

  “Well, I wish I could say that my interest in you is purely professional,” responds Dr. Meridian.

  “You trying to get under my cape, doctor?”

  “A girl can’t live by psychoses alone.”

  His interest piqued, Batman asks, “The car right? Chicks love the car.”

  “What is there about the wrong kind of man?” Dr. Meridian asks herself aloud. “In grade school, it was guys with earrings. College . . . motorcycles, leather jackets. Now . . . (she reaches out and feels his breastplate). . . black rubber!”

  With her blonde hair blown by an electric fan off-camera, she comes on to Batman. He says he hasn’t had much luck with women, to which she responds that perhaps he just hasn’t met the right one.

  The above exchange was pretty much the extent of what was expected of Nicole in the way of character development. Clearly, she was in the movie to provide eye candy to comic book fans and little else.

  Batman Forever lived up to expectations by grossing $184 million in the United States and another $149 million in overseas markets, but reviews were mixed, as might be expected. Peter Travers, writing in Rolling Stone, thought its overall tone was an improvement over the two previous Batman movies: “There’s no fun machine this summer that packs more surprises. Sure, there’s a lot missing: Batman Forever is more cheery than haunting. The violence, being cartoony and affectless, has no weight or consequence—something the moral finger pointers mysteriously think is a good thing.”