THE OSCAR-WINNING ACTRESS EXPLAINS PRACTICAL AND SPIRITUAL CONNECTIONS TO HER NEWEST ROLE AS THE ADOPTIVE MOTHER OF A LOST INDIAN BOY, AND HOW SHE MANAGES TO STAY SENSITIZED IN AN OFTEN COLD WORLD

BY SUSAN HORNIK AND MATT SCANLON

For a nation that has roughly the same population as North Korea, Angola, and Taiwan, Australia’s actor presence in Hollywood is nothing short of startling. A quick edit meeting brought up 30 candidates without breaking a sweat, including Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, Geoffrey Rush, Naomi Watts, Hugh Jackman, Judy Davis, Heath Ledger, Joel Edgerton, Margot Robbie, and Chris Hemsworth. And while there were certainly actor ex-pats who made their way to the U.S. prior to her arrival in the late 1980s, it’s unquestionable that Oscar winner Nicole Kidman paved a marketability trail for Aussies since that has been both invaluable and unbroken. Her film resume reads like a highlight reel of her era, and includes Far and Away, Days of Thunder, Batman Forever, Eyes Wide Shut, Moulin Rouge!, Cold Mountain, and Grace of Monaco, but it’s her newest role, she explained at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, that is perhaps her most personal.

In Lion, scheduled for a November 25 national release, the 49-year-old industry veteran—and mother of two birth children and two adopted children—plays Sue Brierley, the adoptive mother of Saroo, a five-year-old Indian boy who gets lost on the streets of Calcutta and survives numerous challenges before being taken in by the Brierleys. Twenty-five years later, Saroo sets out to find his lost Indian family. With a screenplay by Luke Davies and based on the non-fiction book A Long Way Home: A Memoir by Saroo Brierley (Penguin Publishing Group, 2015), the film co-stars Rooney Mara and Dev Patel.

“For a child to be loved and to grow up in a family with love is the most important thing,” said Kidman at the Festival. “And however that family comes together, it comes together, but you obviously want the child to have pure and beautiful love, which is what Sue was able to offer both her boys. And I think that’s probably the thing I most related to…that she had this unconditional love for her children. Her essence is very beautiful.”

Kidman met with the real-life Sue, and recalled her impressions at the Film Festival. “We spent a day together talking, and just clicked,” she said. “She is a gentle, compassionate woman and has been very involved with the film, and so I got to know her well…I hope as we promote the project more, people get to meet the family, as they are just lovely.”

While Kidman has played many mothers, her maternal instincts kicked into a higher gear with this role. “For me, this is a film about the power of mothers,” she said, “whichever form they come in, whether they are biological or adoptive. As I said to the real Saroo, ‘You have two mothers, lucky boy!’ When you have good love like that, you really flourish. However it comes your way is how it comes. It’s very emotional for me, obviously.”

Though raised from the age of 4 in Sydney, Australia, Kidman was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, her parents temporarily in the U.S. on educational visas. As a schoolgirl, she attended a local theater group and, encouraged by director Jane Campion, made an impressive film debut in Bush Christmas in 1983. Her U.S. breakthrough came with Dead Calm in 1989, then Days of Thunder and Billy Bathgate in the two successive years. Roles followed in To Die For (1995), Practical Magic (1998), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999), in which she co-starred with then-husband Tom Cruise.

Kidman won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of a Parisian singer and courtesan in Baz Luhrmann’s musical Moulin Rouge! in 2001. She went on to play writer Virginia Woolf in a riveting performance in The Hours (2002), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Actress.

Kidman has also embraced independent film work, not least in the Civil War-set Cold Mountain (2003) and Dogville (2004). Comedy work has also been in the mix, including The Stepford Wives (2004) and Bewitched (2005). She starred as famed photographer Diane Arbus in Fur (2006) as well as in the 2010 independent drama Rabbit Hole, which brought her a third Oscar nomination, and also worked with Clive Owen in the HBO television film Hemingway & Gellhorn, playing journalist Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway’s third wife. Another real-life role was that of actress Grace Kelly (later Princess of Monaco) in Grace of Monaco, an Emmy-nominated TV film.

During a Q&A at this year’s BFI London Film Festival, Kidman talked about a love of acting that started in tender years.

“I wanted to be an actress since I was a child,” she said. “Being Australian, it wasn’t something that you were told…was a career you could have—rather it was something you could do on the side. I also came from academic parents who were all about choosing an academic career, so I sort of had to make my own way…One day my dad brought home this pamphlet that [detailed] acting classes, Saturday morning at the Philip Street Theatre. And I was like, ‘Oh! Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!’ But [they said] ‘We’re not going to drive you; you have to get yourself there.’ I got the bus and train timetables and took two buses and a train to get myself there by 9 a.m., and did four hours in the theater learning acting and drama history and jazz ballet—all the things they give you to give you a feel of what it’s going to be like. And I just fell in love. I can only explain acting for me as being some part of my DNA.”

Asked about success at the BFI Festival, Kidman made a slightly surprising admission.

“Success [smiles]…my relationship with it is a bit distant,” she said. “I try to stay in the journey [instead]. Winning the Oscar was a turning point. It was incredibly validating, but it almost brought on loneliness for me, because I didn’t have anyone to share it with. I said, ‘Well, this means I need to get my act together—I want to fall in love.’ [Kidman has been married to New Zealand-born country music singer Keith Urban since 2006]. I suppose I’m just fortunate that I’m still endlessly curious about human beings. I can still fall to my knees when I see great theater, great cinema…a painting.”

And returning to her Sue Brierley role and practical and spiritual connections to it, Kidman opined about one of her general rules of acting.

“Winning the Oscar was a turning point. It was incredibly validating, but it almost brought on loneliness for me, because I didn’t have anyone to share it with.”

“My purpose when I work is to sensitize…the worst thing that can happen is a desensitized society, and it’s so bloody hard, because we’re becoming desensitized,” she explained. “It’s the nature of the beast right now. In my work, I’m trying to reach out. I fear coldness in society.”

Next up for Kidman is executive producing and co-starring in the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies, adapted to the small screen from Australian writer Liane Moriarty’s bestselling novel. Her next big-screen role will be in a 2017 remake of the 1970s thriller The Beguiled, directed by Sofia Coppola.