Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life

by James L. Dickerson

  Nicole further stated in court papers that she had protested Tom’s intention to dissolve the marriage and had “urged him not to leave but to enter marriage counseling with her or to take other steps to address whatever problems may have existed in their marriage relationship. [Tom] said his decision was final, and he departed the parties’ home.”

  In her response to Tom’s lawsuit, Nicole insisted on face-to-face meetings with Tom and said that his request for joint custody was “contingent upon [his] agreement to communicate, consult, and—from time to time—meet directly with [Nicole] as to all important issues affecting the children’s general welfare.” She also stated her interest in living with the children primarily at her home in Sydney or “elsewhere in the United States.”

  News of a miscarriage only whetted the appetite of the news media. Tom had been sexually active for almost two decades and had gone through two marriages, all without ever fathering a child. Was it within the bounds of reason that he would suddenly do so in the final weeks of his marriage with Nicole? There was speculation that someone other than Tom had fathered the baby. Why, skeptics argued, would Tom divorce Nicole if she was carrying his child?

  Ewan McGregor was so concerned about the finger pointing revolving around the miscarriage and breakup that he issued a statement denying that he had ever had an affair with Nicole: “I don’t know anything about it—it wasn’t anything to do with me.” The other men identified as possible lovers, George Clooney and Marcus Graham, issued similar statements describing the rumors as nonsense.

  News reports described Nicole as being shattered by the divorce, distraught enough to lose the baby. Reported the Star: “She had tried all these years to get pregnant by Tom and when she finally manages to, he is not here for her. She has absolutely no doubt that it was his treatment of her that caused her to lose the baby. She was up crying night after night after night. She was a complete emotional wreck.”

  Tom’s response to the miscarriage and divorce was markedly different. When news of the miscarriage reached him, he reacted “coolly,” according to People magazine, which also reported him telling a friend that, “Nic knows exactly why we are getting a divorce. But she’s the mother of our children and I wish her well.”

  Immediately after Nicole informed her family about her marital problems, her sister, Antonia, and her mother, Janelle, flew to Los Angeles to be with Nicole and the children. Janelle’s choice of therapy for her daughter was to encourage her to paint. She set an easel up next to a pair of French windows where the light cascaded into the house and she showed her how to work with color on canvas. Nicole quickly learned that she had absolutely no talent as an artist, but just as her mother promised, she found the exercise relaxing.

  Antony stayed behind in Australia, but he spoke to Nicole often on the telephone, giving her, we must presume, the advice he offers in his books. “Another myth that keeps coming up in connection with suggested divorce is the belief that because two people once enjoyed life together, there must be a basis for reconciliation,” Antony wrote in Family Life: Adapting to Change. “This is always worthy of consideration, but to feel that people who were once happy together can inevitably, with sufficient effort, reestablish marital bliss is often unrealistic. Interests, attitudes, activities and goals of people change. To assume that every boy and girl who married in the spring of a youthful romance at twenty-one will find life delightful and interesting together at age forty-one is to believe in fairy tales and magic.”

  If there was one thing that Nicole no longer believed in, it was fairy tales and magic. Thanks to the emotional support she re­ceived from her sister and mother, and thanks to the no-nonssense advice she received from her psychologist dad, she was able to re­bound from the initial trauma with an attitude that one magazine described as a “textbook example of how to handle a personal cri­sis.”

  Nicole dropped her efforts for reconciliation and focused instead on her children, her career, and her ongoing battle with Tom over how their estimated $250 million estate would be divided up. Tom wasted no time going after the lion’s share of the estate and the ferocity of his lawyers’ demands at first caught Nicole off guard. She bounced back quickly, however, and hired estate-hungry lawyers of her own.

  Los Angles observers saw the divorce as shaping up to be the celebrity legal battle of the century. Some commentators wondered if the “secrets” of the marriage would somehow slip through the publicity that the couple had in place and find their way into court documents. If so, they would be disappointed, for lawyers on both sides were given strict orders to keep Nicole and Tom out of the headlines.

  Nicole told the Sydney Morning Herald that news coverage of her divorce was very “upsetting” and “invasive” during a period she described as the toughest time of her life. “I understand that people are interested, but it’s my life—my personal life,” she said. “It’s very difficult seeing your life being dragged through the newspapers and the tabloids and your children being dragged through it.”

  Along with Nicole’s name was dragged another name—Penelope Cruz, Tom’s love interest in Vanilla Sky. Nicole didn’t know what to think. Tom denied any involvement with her, but the rumors had just enough credibility in them to make Nicole suspicious. In her own mind, Penelope was the reason for the divorce, at least that’s what she confided to friends.

  The situation was not helped by a “Legends of Hollywood” Vanity Fair over story. For the cover, photographer Annie Leibovitz shot a group portrait that included, in addition to Nicole, Vanessa Redgrave, Sophia Loren, Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Catherine Deneuve, Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Chloe Sevigny, and—horror of horrors—Penelope Cruz, though why Penelope was chosen was a mystery since her Hollywood presence was almost non-existent.

  The wily Leibovitz posed Nicole on the left corner, hand on hip, smileless with a regal posture—and placed Penelope on the opposite corner, leaning forward, forearms crossed in a pose of feminine submission. Nicole appeared slightly tense, Penelope looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and most of the other women seemed slightly amused at the high drama into which they had inadvertently stumbled

  Writing about Nicole, Vanity Fair’s Punch Hutton described her as “flawless—and we mean it: we saw her naked during the 1998-1999 London and Broadway runs of The Blue Room . . . Yes, Hollywood’s most elegant Australian import knows how to create a buzz.”

  Nicole took it all in stride, for above all else she considered herself a survivor. Despite a constant stream of emotional upheavals, Nicole reached a point at which she felt comfortable sending her mother and sister back to Sydney. She decided to allow her lawyers to fret over the terms of the divorce settlement, while she got the children settled into a routine and herself back in touch with her career.

  In early April, when Tom took the stage at Los Angeles’s Shrine Auditorium on Oscar night, Nicole was not in the audience; she was at the home of a friend, watching the awards show on television. Friends said she was over wanting to get back together with him, but was still puzzled over why he had left her.

  In early May, Nicole taped the Oprah show, ostensibly to promote the upcoming release of Moulin Rouge. Nicole told Oprah that she was fearful that if she didn’t deliver on her performance in the movie, she would let a lot of people down.

  After a few initial questions about the movie—and the customary head-nodding chit-chat—Oprah got right to point: “The message of the movie is it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Do you believe that?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Yeah—so how are you?”

  “I’m—I’m—I’m good,” she answered, then quickly admitted that she was a terrible liar. “Anyone here who has been through a divorce, it’s—it’s a nightmare. It just is. That’s what it is. And you pretend that you’re fine and there’s days when you’re great and there’s days when you’re not great and I’m kind of in a position now where I have to sit in front of people and a
nswer questions about my life that I never thought I’d be doing.”

  Nodding sympathetically at each comment, her eyes searching Nicole’s face for the slightest sign of emotion, Oprah was her customary consoling self; she did everything but reach out and give Nicole an enormous hug. But, every once in a while, a light would go off somewhere in her consciousness and she would perk up with a question that made Nicole squirm. Out of the blue, she asked the actress: “Do you wish you would get back together?” To which, Nicole, her frantic eyes darting, said, “Shush—Oprah!”

  Next up for Nicole was the Moulin Rouge roller coaster. On April 18, 2001, she attended a celebrity-packed screening of the film in New York. She was scheduled to participate in additional screenings and press conferences, but the studio canceled them because of the continuing media frenzy over her miscarriage and divorce, which studio executives felt might detract from coverage of the film.

  Instead, it was decided to use the film’s screening at the Cannes Film Festival on May 9 to kick-off the film’s media campaign. Surely, by that time, the executives reasoned, Nicole’s divorce would be old news.

  What was making headlines, besides the divorce, were charges made by Nicole’s lawyers that a forty-year-old man named Matthew Hooker was stalking her. In papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Nicole alleged that the man had “come to [her] home on numerous occasions” and “threatened to commit acts of violence.” It was also charged that the man had posted a message for Nicole on his website that accused her publicists and managers of “sabotaging any chance we have of being close.”

  Nicole’s petition further stated that Hooker had showed up at her gated home and tried to lure her out to go to the ballet with him and to take her children to get ice cream. According to the New York Daily News, Hooker told her staff that she was “playing hard to get.” After he had a run-in with Nicole’s security guards, the police were called, causing one officer to proclaim Hooker “mentally unstable.”

  The Daily News further claimed that Hooker had stalked super­model Claudia Schiffer in April 2000 at her home on the island of Mal­lorca. According to the newspaper, he was picked up by police after Schiffer said the man was not welcome at her home.

  When Hooker was brought before a judge in the Kidman case, he denied being a stalker. He was merely in love with Nicole, he explained. He admitted going to her home to ask her to attend the ballet with him. He admitted asking if he could take her children out to get ice cream. He admitted writing her love poems. But he denied ever stalking the actress.

  After the court hearing, at which Nicole won a temporary restraining order, Hooker told reporters he had no idea why Nicole had told “lies” about him. All he had done, he insisted, was ask her out on a date “All I know is, I’ve never been violent—I’ve never been angry—I’ve never harassed anyone,” he said. “I tried to meet a woman and date a woman and that’s all.”

  Not impressed by Hooker’s explanation was the judge, who ordered him to stay at least two hundred and fifty yards away from Nicole, her children, their homes, work and schools for a period of three years.

  ~ ~ ~

  In early May, before going to France for Cannes, Nicole and director Baz Luhrmann huddled in a small windowless office on the Twentieth Century Fox lot, where he was still hard at work editing the film. “Let’s be honest here,” Luhrmann told Nicole, according to the New York Times. “It won’t be the most gorgeous print in Christendom, but it’ll play.” To which she responded, “At least you’ll have something to show. Ewan and I have been joking that if it’s not ready, we’re going to have to get up and do some of the scenes and sing a few of the songs—do a medley.”

  The film was roundly praised after its New York screening, but Luhrmann still felt insecure about it, which was why he continued to tinker with it. Rumors circulated around Hollywood that Fox executives felt the film was too edgy for a mainstream audience and, after spending approximately $50 million on the film, they wanted something that would cruise with ease into middle America.

  Luhrmann did not impress the New York Times writer as being especially optimistic—or perhaps, the writer wondered, his subdued manner could be attributed to a lack of sleep, for it was clear he had not slept in a long time. Luhrmann was glum and compared the experience of editing the film to facing the gallows. Nicole was not much more optimistic, telling the writer, “If this doesn’t work, nobody will want to touch me.”

  All that doom and gloom disappeared once they arrived in Cannes. Nicole was the toast of the city as reporters clamored to get close to her. Luhrmann noted, with just a hint of resentment, that the only comment he made that was picked up by the twenty-five or so television cameras there to cover the event was his observations that “Nicole is very strong.” None of the other statements he made about the movie were ever aired.

  There was a reason for all the media attention around Nicole, of course. Her life, with all its Hollywood nuances of power and romance, was more interesting that any movie scheduled to be shown at the festival. Right before she made her first appearance outside the Palais, she gave her emotions a tight pinch as she walked up the stairs. She reminded herself to enjoy the moment.

  As soon as she stepped into view, wearing a black gown slit up the front, with a bow on her left hip, shouts of “Nee-cole! Nee-cole!” rose from the crowd of ten thousand, their excitement creating a wave of enthusiasm. She got so caught up in the excitement that she broke away from Luhrmann and rushed toward the fans that were barricaded behind the stands. She blew kisses and she signed autographs, then pressed even deeper into the crowd, reveling in its embrace. After a few moments of that, she turned and rushed back to the red staircase, pausing at the top to wave to her fans.

  Observing her at the festival was Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne, who noted that the media asked her more questions about Tom than about Moulin Rouge. “She looked so beautiful,” he later wrote. “It’s very difficult for a public person to have to talk about the intimacies of her life while she’s plugging a movie, going to premieres, waving to the crowds, calling home to the kids—and doing all these things well. That’s what a star is all about, and hats off to her.”

  At a press conference, during which McGregor sat next to her and shared a cigarette with her, Nicole said she had developed an “emotional adoration” for her co-star during production, especially when he sang to her. Singing about love, she giggled, made it easier to play the love on screen because it “extends” the emotions: “It lets you get lost in it, particularly when Ewan sang Elton John’s “Your Song,” I must have heard it six hundred times, but every time he did it, it still evoked an immediate emotional adoration of him.”

  Asked by reporters if her marital problems made it difficult to promote the film, she said, “Obviously this would not be my choice . . . to sit in front of everyone and have questions about my personal life, but I do feel really proud of this film.”

  After Moulin Rouge was presented at the festival—it was one of twenty-three selected for the honor—Nicole and Ewan McGregor were asked to sing a song or two from the film, but they laughingly declined each request, citing a pledge to each other never to let that happen, “no matter how drunk anyone was.”

  Despite mixed reviews of the film at the festival, Nicole left Cannes convinced they might have a hit on their hands. Exhausted by all the publicity demands, she went home to Sydney to be with her family. There at the airport to greet her private jet was her mother, Janelle, who lovingly planted a kiss on her cheek.

  “My mama,” Nicole intoned to a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herlad, her soft voice on the verge of tears. “She gave me the best advice just by who she is. She’s seen herself through many tough times. She’s a proud woman. I think you hold your head up and you move forward—and every day is another day.”

  Later, she told an Australian magazine writer that she was just happy to be home where she could curl up in her own bed.

  After less than a week’s rest
and relaxation at her parents’ home—her only diversion was a Moulin Rouge homecoming premier and party which drew nearly three thousand guests—Nicole left Sydney to start work on a new film, The Hours, which was set to be shot in New York, London, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Directed by British-born director Stephen Daldry, best known for Billy Elliot, the film is based on the best-selling novel by Michael Cunningham. Nicole was asked to play the part of literary lesbian Virginia Woolf.

  It was exactly the type of role she relished—not only would she get to play a lesbian, she would be thrust into the world of literary feminism, familiar territory she was fond of exploring with her feminist mother. Nicole also was pleased to share the spotlight with two actresses for whom she had great respect, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.

  For her role, Nicole used a prosthetic nose and spoke in a deep, rough-edged British accent. Later, when the film was shown to test audiences, several people approached the director and, with a disappointed tone in their voices, told him that they thought that Nicole was supposed to be in the film. Unrecognizable in the role, people could not identify the actress.

  “I think whenever you play somebody, it’s not about imitating them,” she subsequently explained to Interview. “It’s about finding their essence, trying to embody them in a certain way . . . With Virginia, it was smoking those hand-rolled cigarettes. And there was a hankie I carried in my pocket. I don’t know why, but this hankie in the pocket of the dress, this sort of housedress, did it. Everyone would look at my face and say, ‘You look so different.’ But it wasn’t the make-up that did it for me; it was the smoking and that handkerchief. Then I changed the way I walked, and suddenly, Virginia was alive."

  Nicole did not mind altering her face and her elegant demeanor to play the part, but, to the surprise of everyone associated with the movie, she dug her heels in and refused to do a nude scene. Why would an actress who had disrobed in most of her films, who had stood, night after night, totally naked on stages in New York and London, suddenly decide that nudity was out of the question?