Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life

by James L. Dickerson

  When not filming in and around the village—Minghella reportedly paid local farmers about three hundred dollars per cow for the inconvenience of relocating their livestock—Nicole flew to London or Budapest until called back to production. It was on one such trip to London that she encountered Adrian Deevoy, GQ magazine’s editor-at-large, who subsequently wrote a wildly enthusiastic article about falling in love with the actress, thus proving, once again, that the actress has a strange rapport with writers.

  “As any man with a beating heart knows, when she dressed down she looks gorgeous and when she dresses up it’s just off the scale,” wrote Deevoy. “The first time we meet formally she is wearing an antique T-shirt, old Levis and perfectly weathered loafers. Out initial conversation is about perfume. She makes her own.

  “‘Here,’ she smiles, offering a slender wrist for a detailed olfactory inspection. The smell is reminiscent of home-made custard and autumnal woodland, subliminally sweet and deceptively powerful. Although you’re never fully aware of it, her scent can subtly fill a room.”

  Considering the mysterious, breath-taking effect Nicole has on writers—and the effect that muse peddlers seem to have on her—odds-makers would be well advised to chalk up a working scribe on her potential list of suitors-to-be, especially since, for the past five years, she has been secretly trying her hand at writing. Her first project as a writer? She worked on the Meg Ryan film, In the Cut, with director and long-time friend Jane Campion, though she didn’t ask for screen credit.

  Nicole’s love life was the subject of intense speculation throughout 2001 and 2002. In May, 2001, while in Cannes, she was reported to be dating Italian movie producer Fabrizio Mosca, who debuted his first film, The Hundred Steps, at the film festival. Then, there was Adam Duritz, the lead singer of Counting Crows. Was she actually dating either of those men? Her publicist denied that was the case, saying that they were merely friends, but the truth hardly mattered at that point. America wanted her to be with someone—exactly who didn’t seem to matter.

  ~ ~ ~

  “I’ve had a very strange life the past three years,” Nicole told In Style magazine. “I think I was very naïve. Over [that time period] I’ve had to encounter death [a reference to Stanley Kubrick’s passing]. I loved Stanley. It was very tough to lose him. And then divorce. All the things you think you’re never going to have to do. But, hey—other people are battling cancer, so in terms of the big picture, I go, ‘Pull yourself together, Nicole.’”

  Nicole was able to pull herself together by focusing on her children, allowing her mother and sister to comfort her during the really hard times, taking her psychologist father’s advice—“when individuals are in the process of divorcing, they need to practice risk taking if they wish to establish new relationships; of course, you don’t have to look for a new partner if you choose not to”—and, of course, by throwing herself, without mercy, some would say, into her work.

  Premiere magazine put her career in perspective in May 2002, when it named Nicole to its “Power List 2002: The Lords of Hollywood,” along with other movers and shakers such as Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Cameron Crowe, and, yes, ex-husband Tom Cruise. Describing her as a “plucky divorcee,” who had thawed her icy image by the very human way in which she handled her divorce, the magazine gave her credit for singing her way to the Oscars in Moulin Rouge and for carrying The Others, but it also looked to the future by noting her willingness to get raped in Dogville (2002), her pluck to play a janitor opposite Anthony Hopkins in The Human Stain (2003), and her willingness to wear a prosthetic nose as Virginia Wolf in The Hours (2002).

  The magazine also might have credited her unmitigated gall to play a Southerner in Cold Mountain (2003) and her fearlessness to leap into the role of the nose-twitching witch Samantha in the film version of the popular 1960s television show, Bewitched (2003).

  Incredibly, as 2002 wore on, Nicole was able to re-establish a civil, sometimes surprisingly warm, relationship with Tom, with the common denominator being their children. It is not uncommon for parents to become closer to their children during and immediately after divorce—and Tom and Nicole were no exception.

  Nicole took new delight is sharing stories about her children, especially if the stories were risqué. She told Rolling Stone about riding in a chauffeur-driven car in Vienna with Bella and several other people. Without warning, Bella suddenly broadcast that “My mommy has a vagina,” to which Nicole responded with a parental warning that it was not a subject she should be discussing. But before the warning sank in, Bella countered with, “It has fur on it. Some vaginas don’t have fur, and some do.”

  The driver burst out laughing, as did Nicole and everyone else. At a time in her life when her emotional connection to Tom was being rendered, she discovered new joys and possibilities in her children. Bella, she learned, had a talent for painting. When she told the child that there might be money in painting, the little girl’s eyes lit up and before Nicole knew what had happened she had produced eight paintings, all of animals. Nicole promised to have an exhibition at which she would serve lemonade and cookies.

  Keith and Nicole istockphoto.com

  Chapter 11

  BRAVE NEW WORLD

  Nicole’s transition into a new life without Tom Cruise was not as easy as she had hoped. The public perception was that Tom had fired her as his wife, thus creating a persona of her as damaged goods. People that she thought were her friends could not run fast enough away from her. At times she felt as if she had a deadly contagious disease. After selling the home in Los Angeles that she had shared with Tom, she looked east to New York. She still had her waterfront home in Sydney, but she needed a place to call home in America—and the West Coast, with its Hollywood mafia mentality, did not fit the new image she had of herself.

  Nicole purchased an apartment in New York for a reported price of $8 million and busily went about the business of beginning a new life (her new neighbors were Calvin Klein and Martha Stewart) and she expressed interest in making London her permanent home. She told the British magazine Hello that she thought the children would be better off there, where the schools are better and the air somewhat cleaner.

  “You can’t go for a walk in Los Angeles,” she lamented. “I will rent a house [in London] for a while and see what happens. I would like to buy somewhere in London, but I bet they put the prices up when they realize it’s me.”

  Nicole underwent many changes during and after her divorce, some good and some bad, but as she emerged from those dark, pain-laden days, she made it clear to everyone around her that while she has no intention of giving up on romance, she plans to proceed ever so slowly into that brave new world.

  Nicole was linked to Vin Diesel after she was spotted having dinner with him at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge. Then she was rumored to be seeing actor Tobey Maguire, even though she was eight years older than the “Spider-Man” star and much taller, but she denied a romance and said they were simply hanging out as friends. The next “romance” sighting was with Jonathan Davis, a 32-year-old black musician who uses the stage name Q-Tip, but asks friends to call him by his Islamic name of Kamaal Fareed. The New York Post, seemingly incredulous at the unorthodox pairing, gushed that the two were seen “making out” in public.

  Apparently reveling in the “oh my gosh” publicity Nicole included Q-Tip in all her public appearances. He sat next to her at the premiere of The Hours. He was with her at the Golden Globe Awards, but spent more time with her friends than with her. Those who expressed shock that she would pair off with a black rapper did not know much about her as a person. She and Tom had adopted a black child, so race was a non-factor in her life choices. There is always the fact that ever since she was a teenage she has always alternated between extreme shyness and what could be called an extreme wild streak. She is fearless in her personal and professional choices. If she has a trademark it is that willingness to experiment with what life has to offer. She expressed her feelings about t
he media frenzy about her sex life with a comment to a Vanity Fair writer: “I don’t know what my future is. But I really don’t care what anybody else is saying.”

  What she does care about is her career. Nominated for an Academy Award for her role as author Virginia Woolf in The Hours, she was a nervous wreck when she arrived at the ceremonies. Actor Ed Harris, who sat next to her, commented that she did not look well. She said she was nauseous and attributed her discomfort to a bad shrimp.

  When Denzel Washington took the stage to read the winner in the “Best Actress” category, Nicole looked like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. He called out her name and her mind went blank. She rushed to the stage, looking every bit the movie star in a black strapless gown, but when she stepped up to the microphone she could not remember a single person she wanted to acknowledge. Her hands trembled. She ended up thanking her family and tearfully professing her desire to make her mother and daughter proud of her.

  A thousand thoughts went through her mind, not the least of which was her realization that she had survived her divorce from Tom and was on top of the world. She was respected for her talents and the gold statue she held with both hands was all the validation she needed that she was a survivor.

  Not long after leaving the stage, Nicole used her cell phone to call Tom, who was on the set of The Last Samurai in New Zealand with their son, Connor. “It was so important for me to talk to Connor, and yes, to Tom,” she explained to People magazine. “We have very different lives now, but as I’ve said to Tom, I will be there for him for the rest of his life, always there . . . Tom and I had eleven years together. Your heart has to stay loving. For the kids, it has to be.”

  By the time Nicole made it back to her hotel with her family entou­rage it was 2 a.m. She and her parents drank champagne and ate French fries, while daughter Bella was given juice. By the time she got to bed it was 4:30 in the morning and the sun was just hours away from rising. When she awoke the next day, the first thing she saw was not a man in her bed, but the golden Oscar perched protectively on her nightstand, looking over her, she imagined. She had risen from the depths of despair to the pinnacle of success. Life was good. Of the approximately 130,000 actors in the United States only two are chosen each year for Best Actor and Best Actress. The little man on her nightstand whispered to her that she was one of only 302 actors who had even taken home an Oscar. She found the thought intoxicating. Perhaps it was not immortality, but it was damned close. And she had done it alone, without a man in the wings pulling strings.

  Even so, she had mixed feelings about her success. Sitting in her hotel suite, surrounded by family, but without a man in her life she felt a profound loneliness, thinking what is wrong with me?

  ~ ~ ~

  Nicole continued to date in the months after her Oscar victory, but she found it a stressful social exercise. She really wasn’t in the market for a guy pal. She wanted to fall in love. She wanted a man capable of rocking her world. You know, just like in the movies.

  Buoyed by her newfound acceptance as a major actress, she threw herself back into her career, beginning a decade-long pattern of doing two—and sometimes three—films a year. In 2003, the year she won the Oscar, three strong films were released: Cold Mountain, the Human Stain, and Dogville. All three were powerful films that offered Nicole challenging roles. Writing about Dogville, Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers asked: “Didn’t anyone tell Nicole Kidman you don’t solidify your star power by starring in a three-hour art film for Danish loose cannon Lars von Trier?” He then answers his own question with a turnabout: “No, thank the cinema gods, which is why Kidman gives the most emotionally bruising performance of her career in Dogville, a movie that never met a cliché it didn’t stomp on.”

  Because the film is an undisguised attack on American-style capitalism, audiences left the theater either loving it or hating it, depending on their political bent. Stephen Holden, writing in the New York Times, says that von Trier “pulls the rug out from under (Kidman) by suggesting that retaliation is more satisfying than martyrdom, and asserting that forgiveness is a form of moral arrogance that deserves to be trampled,” but he goes on to praise Kidman’s performance as a sweetly underplayed “angel of compassion.”

  However, in 2004 and 2005 four of the weakest films of her career were released: the Stepford Wives, Birth, the Interpreter, and Bewitched, overshadowing her 2003 victories. Film critic Roger Ebert was mystified by the casting in Bewitched, a movie based on the television series of the same name, as were many of the people who paid to see the movie. Wrote Ebert: “It is tolerably entertaining. Many of its parts work, although not together. Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman are funny and likeable, but they’re in a plot that doesn’t allow them to aim for the same ending with the same reason . . . There is not a movie here. Just scenes in search of one . . . But what are they doing in the same movie?”

  With Nicole co-starring in The Stepford Wives with audience-friendly actors such as Bette Midler, Glenn Close and Matthew Broderick, expectations were that the 2004 re-make film would exceed the 1975 version. That didn’t happen. Critics complained that the film never gelled. Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum described it as a “collection of comedy checkpoints.” That is a nice way of saying that the screenplay and acting were contrived to be funny, but seldom offered more than an uncomfortable smile.

  In Nicole’s native Australia, aboriginal bushmen have a centuries-old technique of hunting that involves setting fires to drive the prey into a gauntlet of spear-and-club toting hunters. Public and critical reaction to Nicole’s 2004 and 2005 films had the same effect. But instead driving her into the neighborhood of better films it drove her into the arms of another inappropriate—for her, at least—lover. This time stepping up to the challenge was musician Lenny Kravitz, the son of NBC news producer Sy Kravitz and actress Roxie Roker who played Helen Willis on the 1970s sitcom, The Jeffersons. They met through a mutual friend while she sublet Kravitz’s SoHo apartment while work continued on her $8 million West Village apartment.

  In one of the most revealing comments of her career, she told a People writer: “It’s lonely when you know you don’t have someone in your life to protect you. I want someone who says, ‘I will stand by you and be there for you, and your life is just as important to me as mine.’”

  Nicole and Kravitz, who bears an uncanny resemblance to O.J. Simpson, were frequently seen about Manhattan, attending parties and dining in restaurants. Observers noted that they walked hand-in-hand and sat cheek-to-cheek. Caught up in the excitement of a new romance, Nicole confided in friends that she finally had found “the one” she had been looking for since her divorce from Tom.

  Rumors of marriage continued to surface, especially when it became known that she met his teenage daughter and spent time with her, and he met her children and family. Their engagement was cemented when he gave her a solitaire diamond ring. The world looked on with bemused interest, especially individuals in the music industry, knowing what Nicole apparently did not know: musicians, going all the way back to Louis Armstrong, do not have a good track record with romantic relationships.

  Nicole’s eight-month-long romance with Kravitz came to a crashing end when she learned that he was seen in Miami flirting with actress Michelle Rodriguez at a party. She severed the relationship and began, anew, her search for a soul mate worthy of her devotion. To no one’s surprise, Nicole sought emotional refuge in the fantasy world of moviemaking, where romance can be scripted.

  In 2004 Good Housekeeping asked her what she would choose if she found a great, wonderful love, but it meant having to give up her life as an actress. “Oh, no question,” she responded. “Give me the love. A great, enduring love that’s complete? Please. I’m there. And I think, in some ways, at the moment, my work is my love, because I haven’t found the man to love yet . . . I’d rather not have anyone than settle for the wrong person.”

  ~ ~ ~

  In January 2005, Nicole attended a G’D
ay LA party at a Los Angeles event honoring Australians. She met Keith Urban at the event and they talked, but there were no fireworks. It was one shy person meeting another shy person. Although their respective professions required them to be extreme extroverts, neither applied their professional game to their private lives. If you were a woman who found herself desirous of Keith’s affections you would need to reach out to him and let him know in plain English. If you were a man desirous of Nicole’s affections, you would need to overpower her with your sense of self worth. Neither of those things happened at their first meeting. They smiled. They chatted. They were pleasant. Neither reached out to the other. They parted and went their separate ways.

  On paper Keith did not seem like an especially good match for Nicole. Born in New Zealand, his parents moved to Australia when he was two years of age. Born the same year as Nicole—1967—he grew up in Queensland, a predominately rural state located north of New South Wales, where the Kidman family had settled. Queensland was known for its sugar cane, while New South Wales was known for its cosmopolitan city, Sydney. In American terms, it was the difference between growing up in New York City and growing up in Iowa.

  In 1991, at the age of 24, he recorded a self-titled album that charted four singles in Australia. The following year he moved to the United States and settled in Nashville, Tennessee, where his guitar skills landed him frequent bookings as a session guitarist in the city’s recording studios. By that time, Nicole had starred in thirteen films and married leading man Tom Cruise. She was Hollywood royalty and Keith was an eager wannabe recording artist.