Nicole Kidman: Nic of Time

Q: Tell me about the first naked man you saw and how it made you feel.

A: I was doing a play. I was 14 and doing Wedekind's Spring Awakening, which is based upon sexual repression in the late 1800s. We had to share the dressing room with boys who were 15, 16 and we had to change in front of each other. The boys had a naked scene where they whipped each other with towels and that's how I first saw a guy naked. It was thrilling! All of us girls would peek at them through holes, laughing. Every night, I looked forward to going to work. I also had a scene in petticoats where I was begging this boy to beat me. It was amazing for me to be dealing with all that stuff at that age.

Q: Did fame spur you on? Does it now?

A: In Australia, there isn't really "fame." It's more that you're a working actor. I wasn't brought up seeing a lot of American films and thinking that this was where it's at. Acting, theater--that was a place where I could go and just be somebody else. I was like, "I hate who I am. I hate how I look. I hate how I feel with all these hormones racing through my body. Where the hell am I?"

Q: What was it like for you at home?

A: Let me explain it this way: I take our little girl to the set with me. People say all the time, "Oh, it's terrible to be moved around so much." I would have loved it as a child. I was in one place most of the time until I was 17. As soon as I was 17, I left the country and backpacked across Europe. It was like a rebellion. I rebelled wildly.

Q: How wildly?

A: At 17, I announced, "I'm getting on a plane to Amsterdam." I met this Dutch guy and went and lived there. Amsterdam is the kind of city where... [laughing] well, you get quite an education in two weeks. As soon as I got there, I said to him, "I've made this decision. We can sleep in the same bed, but I'd just like to be friends." [Laughing] Try saying that to a guy! We were together on and off for six months, with me reiterating every month, "I want to be friends." My parents are pretty cool. Things were never bad with them, I just said, "I'm doing this. See you later." But it was a big deal because I was so close to my mother.

Q: You cross paths with women like Meg Ryan, Demi Moore and Michelle Pfeiffer often when it comes to going up for roles, don't you?

A: Yeah, and they always get them [laughing].

Q: I said this before, but you really strike me as very ambitious.

A: [Laughing] Stop it. Isn't ambition considered a dirty word? I'm not ambitious in a ruthless way where, if I hear another girl got the role, I'll go, "Fuck her," and call the director. I just think if one project doesn't work out, something else will. At the moment, yeah, I lose out on roles to certain actresses, but I am about to do Jane Campion's movie, which is, to me, a fantastic role. And I didn't have to battle any other actress for that because Jane just chose me.

Q: You mean you didn't lift a finger?

A: No, no. I had to call and call and call her. I really pursued it. I was aware that she was going to do it as a play and I wanted to do it with her. When she said, "I'm going to do it as a movie," I said, "Would you please consider me?" She told me she'd been wanting to work with me. I met her when I was 14. I was cast in a school movie that she was doing and my school exams were coming up. I had to pull out. I was in my parents' house and found the diaries that I had kept from age 12 all the way through and I found this postcard from Jane saying, "I think you made the right decision and I hope one day we will work together. Be careful with what you do, because you have real potential."

Q: What haven't you gotten a shot at that you were panting over?

A: There's a lot of things you would have loved to have gotten a shot at, but they get offered to those four actresses that usually get offered everything and the rest trickles on down. That doesn't happen absolutely one hundred percent, like with Portrait of a Lady. But, let's see, I wasn't even in the United States, but I read Thelma & Louise, and would have loved to have done it. I read The Silence of the Lambs and went, "Oh, wow." I would love to have done Sleepless in Seattle. Meg was great in it, perfect casting. I found out about it too late. I didn't read the script, but I read the book Mary Reilly and would have loved to have done that. I wanted to do The Hudsucker Proxy. I love the Coen brothers. They didn't ask me. Getting rejected is not fun. But I believe in fate, really. I sent in an audition tape for Ghost and didn't get it, but [Ghost screenwriter] Bruce Joel Rubin cast me in My Life a few years later.

Q: I'd love to see what you could do with a smart, daft, Carole Lombard, Hepburn-type role.

A: And I'm never considered that way. What I come up against all the time is: "She's too cold and too aloof." I'd never choose those words to describe myself. In fact, I'm over-emotional in my personal life. Too worried. Too sensitive. To the extent where it drives everyone else crazy.

Q: When you strip it all away, who are you?

A: Oh, maaaaaan. I'm someone who wants to experience everything. Who wants to make sure she has fun. That it's not just work, work, work, serious, serious. The best compliment one can give me is that I have a sense of humor. I love to laugh, more than anything. If you can't laugh at yourself, you're screwed. When you're living in this kind of environment, you can lose that perspective. I like to have people around me who burst the bubble.

Q: So you're highly emotional in your personal life, yet critics dog you for controlled, underplayed performances.

A: In Australia, it was the complete opposite. There I was much more the out-there, kooky girl. It was hard there for me to get the highly dramatic, very controlled roles, and that's part of what I came over here to do. When I came here, I wanted to change that image, but I guess it's had kind of a reverse effect.

Q: It really surprises me, looking at you, being around you, how you've got this great wild streak that's like vintage Ann-Margret, sex kitten.

A: [Laughing] It is Ann-Margret! People always say to me I look like a young Ann-Margret, which I really take as a compliment. Listen, I would loooove to play a sex kitten.

Q: Because of those sex scenes with Bill Pullman in Malice, you possess surely the most-discussed and widely-ogled butt in Hollywood.

A: [Laughing] Excuse me, Stephen? My what? My butt? In Australia, we call it a bum, which sounds ever so much more demure, don't you think?

Q: Okay, fine. Bum. At the theater where I saw the movie, most of the audience couldn't help but marvel how the camera lingered for what, 30 seconds, on your posterior.

A: [Laughing] Oh, my God. Bum appreciation in the middle of a thriller.

Q: So, first of all, is that you?

A: [Laughing] Yes. Oh, wouldn't that be terrible if I had to say, "Thank you, but actually, that was the body double's bum." I couldn't believe that people were shocked by that. I suppose because I'm married, and because it's not the done thing.

Q: You didn't shock me. I just thought the camera stayed on your backside for a very long time.

A: Actually, yeah, I was surprised about that at first, too. Okay, it was a bit of a shock to me. I didn't see the rushes on that and only saw it when Harold Becker showed me the whole movie. But I've had a scene like that in Dead Calm. It's not earthshaking.

Q: You didn't have a baby then. I was just wondering what...

A: How she'll take it years from now? I don't think that's going to be an issue. There are certain things I won't do. I don't believe in being exploited in a film. I was totally exploited in a film I did in Australia when I was 17. From that point on, I went, never again. And yes, you can get it on video, but I won't tell you what the title is [laughing]. But, really, I was violated in the sense of being told one thing, then another and I was totally trusting. When you're 17, you just want to please everybody and not rock the boat. From that time on, I decided never to do anything unless I want to.

Q: How do you hope to avoid with Isabella the curse of the messed-up Hollywood kid?

A: By sending her to a normal school. By not treating her with kid gloves. By allowing her to be who she is. By always being there for her, like my parents were always there for me. My sister and I are really close and she's made me aware of how she feels when people want to be friends with her because of me. And that can be the case with children and their parents, too.

Q: Let's play some more. What will your hair do if left to its own devices?

A: [Laughing] Dreadlocks. I used to straighten my hair all the time because I was so embarrassed to have such curly hair. As a kid, I'd wear my hair shoved into a beanie when I'd go to camp, like some geek. But, really, it does pretty much what you see.

Q: What's the wildest thing you've ever done on a plane?

A: Jumped out, with my black and lime-green fluorescent parachute. Thirty times. But, you know what? We haven't jumped since the baby. Now I think, "Someone's relying on us. What would happen to her?" But I'm sure we'll get back up there again.

Q: What's the wildest thing you've ever done in a hotel room?

A: "Thaaaat's private," she purred and moaned.

Q: One more question: When you're not around anymore, how would you like people to remember you?

A: Unpretentious, with a sense of humor. Loyal. Try anything once.

Q: Nothing about your career, then?

A: Guess not. [Laughing] Oh, well.

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Halle Berry for the Jan./Feb. Movieline.

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