Nicole Kidman

I have some prejudices against Nicole Kidman. I think she's beautiful, but sometimes a bit too prevalent. I get tired of seeing her sometimes. Also, I've heard some negative stuff about her from friends.

But I'm going to try to put my feelings aside, and give her a fair look.

Let's begin where we usually begin.....

Baby Nicole was born in Hawaii. I didn't have to get that information from Lord Wiki. I already knew it.

Her date of birth was 20 June 1967. That's exactly two months before my parent's got married. And her birthday is the same date as my wedding anniversary.

Birthday website time!

Kidman is a Gemini like my niece. The birthday calculator says she is a 4 in numerology; but since the site ignores 22's, I'll have to do my own calculations.

Well, no. It turns out she's NOT a 2+2=4. She's a 1+3=4.

I'm not sure when Kidman left Hawaii.

Lord Wiki says her dad is a biochemist and clinical psychologist. That's an interesting combination.

Her mom is a nursing instructor.

The dad wrote some books. I'm guessing this is one of them. Well, it has his name, and it was published in Hawaii. So.....

I should have read down a little further. It gives the reason they were in Hawaii, and the length of time they stayed. Daddy Kidman was working as a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health. Anytime I see that name, I think of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

Little Nicole was four when her family moved back to Sydney.

She has a sister who is a journalist.

Kidman's best friend is Naomi Watts. I can't think of Naomi Watts without thinking of The Ring.

Kidman went to Lane Cove Public School. They're having a spell-a-thon in a few days. Fun. Do Australians not call it spelling bee?

Kidman also went to North Sydney Girl's High School. Naomi Watts went there too. I suppose that's how they became best friends. Another person who attended the school was Baz Lurhmann's wife Catherine Martin. I wonder if Kidman was friends with her too. She'd later work with Martin's husband in Moulin Rouge.

For her higher education, Kidman went to Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Phillip Street Theater, and Australian Theater for Young People. I think I looked at the latter when I did Luhrmann.

Lord Wiki says Kidman's first film appearance was in a music video (Bop Girl) at the age of fifteen. That was in 1983.

It's a fun song.

Her career took off soon after the video.

She appeared in twelve episodes of the TV show Five Mile Creek. The show looks cute; kind of like Little House on the Prairie. Their website says the show is Disney's. I'm assuming this just means Disney later bought the rights to it. I'm doubting it was originally a Disney thing. I could be wrong though.

No wait. It might have been originally Disney. Lord Wiki says it was on the Disney Channel in the 1980's. It might have been an American show filmed in Australia. Was it even seen in Australia?

It seems 1983 was a big year for Kidman. She was also in a movie called BMX Bandits. It's a wild kid's movie.  A bike thing. You know I have vague memories of seeing some kid bike movie as a child. I wonder if this was it.

Then there was Bush Christmas. It was a remake of a 1947 movie.

Later in 1980's, she was in the soap opera A Country Practice. I think I've heard of that one before. Kidman was in only two episodes though. She played someone named Simone Jenkins.

In 1989, Kidman was in a movie called Emerald City. Here's a coincidence. The director of the movie was a man named Michael Jenkins. So she was in a soap opera playing a Jenkins person, and then she was in a movie directed by one. Very interesting.....

Also that year, Kidman was in a movie that deals with one of my big fears; going to Thailand or Singapore and having someone sneak drugs into my luggage. Hugo Weaving played her lawyer.

What would our world be like if we

knew for sure there 

was life after death, and 

we could easily talk to our 

dearly-departed on the Internet?

The Dead are Online a novel by Dina Roberts 

I think it was Dead Calm that introduced Kidman to us Americans. I remember hearing about the movie. I can't remember if I've actually ever seen it. I didn't know Billy Zane was in it. Was he the bad guy, or Sam Neil? Okay, it was Zane.

Days of Thunder came soon after, and then Kidman REALLY had the attention of us Americans. She was romancing our Tom Cruise. You got to remember. He was pretty popular and respected in those days. Days of Thunder had appeared shortly after Cocktail, Rainman and Born on the Fourth of July. Those were all pretty popular movies in America.

A couple of years after Days of Thunder, the lovely couple starred in Ron Howard's Far and Away. I DID actually see that movie. I don't remember much about it.

I guess it was in the 1990's that Kidman became a huge star.

In 1995, she was in To Die For It's a dark comedy. I heard of it, but never saw it. I never realized it was directed by Gus Van Sant. Isn't he the guy who did My Private Idaho?

Kidman won a Golden Globe for that movie. I guess she didn't win an Oscar. Was she nominated?

No, it looks like she wasn't. I guess she was a bit snubbed.

In 1998, she was in Practical Magic. I've seen most of the movie, and have read the book. I liked it. I like witch stuff. I love Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

1999 was the year for Eyes Wide Shut. I remember seeing that movie when we lived in New York. I liked it.

Moulin Rouge came out at a time when I was seeing very little movies. Jack was a baby so I was busy with mothering. Tim rented it, and I saw a little bit. I did listen to some of the soundtrack. I soon got into editing family home videos and used some of the songs. I used this song in two of our NYC holiday videos. And I used this song at the end of one of the NYC videos. It features Kidman actually singing.

Kidman won another Golden Globe award for Moulin Rouge. And I think she was snubbed again by the Oscars.

I think this is around the time I started getting sick of seeing Kidman. I remember kind of losing interest in seeing movies; not just because I was busy with the new-mom thing, but I was tired of Kidman. She seemed to be in pretty much EVERYTHING.

I did see The Others though, and I liked that. Jack was about six months old at the time, and it was really rare for Tim and I to watch movies together. We were staying at a hotel in Florida for a convention. We watched the movie on pay-per-view. I remember being anxious that Jack would wake up and I'd miss the rest of the movie.

Here's a piece of trivia I didn't know. Kidman was supposed to star in The Panic Room, but she had an injury from Moulin Rouge. So Jodi Foster took over. I love Jodi Foster. I don't think I really loved The Panic Room.

The little diabetic girl in the Panic Room grew up to fall in love with the world's currently most popular vampire.

Okay. Finally Oscar stopped his grudge against Kidman. She and her fake nose won the award for The Hours.

Shit. This woman is in a lot of movies.

I don't think I've seen many of them. I READ Cold Mountain and I pictured her as the character while I read it. That was a really good book. I read it when I had the stomach flu. It's a good stomach flu book, I have to say.

I love some of the songs from the soundtrack....I used this one in the video I made of my sister's wedding weekend. I'm not sure though if it's the same version that's in the movie. This song is also hauntingly beautiful.

Okay. Jack wants to eat breakfast. I'm going to take a break and then come back to spend more time with Nicole Kidman.

We're back.....

I remember Birth from 2004. I never saw it. But I remember the controversy surrounding the movie. Kidman has some kind of erotic scene with a child in a bathtub. The child is supposed to be her dead husband reincarnated. I don't know. I believe in reincarnation. But I don't think it gives you an excuse to do sexual things with a child. That being said though, I'm not really sure how sexual the scene was. The movie does sound interesting. Have any of you seen it?

In 2005, she was in Baz Luhrmann's very expensive perfume commercial.

Fairly recently she was in the movie Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus with Robert Downy Jr. I saw part of that. It was interesting, although I'm not usually a fan of fictionalized biographies. Later after seeing the movie, I did a little research of Diane Arbus. She took this photo which was an inspiration for the eerie twins in The Shining.

I saw The Invasion; an update to the 1950's and 1970's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I like ALL versions of that movie....including Kidman's.

She was in The Golden Compass. I've seen bits of the movie, but not much of Kidman's part. I read the book.

Oh! I was about to ask if she was in anything recently.

Duh.

Australia.

How could I forget that?

I still don't have any urge to see that movie.

Tim rented it once, but we never watched it.

Her future movies include one in which she'll play a post-op transexual. Interesting. I wonder how Germaine Greer will feel about that.

All right. Enough about the movies. Lord Wiki now talks about her personal life.

She got married in 1990 to Tom Cruise. Their wedding was in Colorado. The lovely couple adopted two kids, a daughter and a son. They separated around their ten year anniversary. Kidman had suffered a miscarriage. I can guess that was a very rough year for her....at least personally. Professionally she did fairly well.

I guess it was Cruise that did the leaving, and she was pretty sad about it all. It reminds me of the Aniston/Pitt thing.

She dated Lenny Kravitz for awhile. Then in 2005, she met her current husband Keith Urban. He's Australian, but she met him in America. They were both at some G'Day USA events in Los Angeles.

Later Kidman had that baby named Sunday. Interesting that she and Tom Cruise were unable to have children together, but they each were able to produce a child with someone else.

Kidman is a Roman Catholic. When she was married to Tom Cruise, she dabbled in Scientology.

She's a democrat. She does work for UNICEF. She also does work for breast cancer because her mother had it.

All right. I'm done with Lord Wiki. Now I'm going to look at the trivia on IMDb.

It says the family didn't go straight from Hawaii to Sydney. They also spent a few years in Washington D.C. Daddy Kidman did work with breast cancer. I guess this was before his own wife had it.

She dropped out of high school to pursue the acting thing. I love hearing stories of successful school drop-outs.

Oh! She was in My Life with Michael Keaton. I LOVE that movie. I totally forgot she was in it. I was just thinking..... The end of that movie is a lot like the end of that Peter Pan movie with Kate Winslet. What's that called again? Ah! Finding Neverland.

Kidman's mother's breast cancer happened when Kidman was a teenager. I can imagine that was rough.

She's scared of butterflies. Now THAT is a very interesting fear.

I just had a chill. IMDb talks about how she had coincidences with the name Grace. It's weird because I had some weird coincidences with the name Grace too. But I kind of forgot what happened. Well, I kind of remember, but it would be too complicated to explain.

Kidman is very tall.

She does her own nude scenes.

She's fearful of sun exposure.

She was in The Stepford Wives. I forgot about that one too. I think I've seen most of it.

Interesting. I don't think Kidman ever did an Enough Rope interview.

I'm just going to surf through Google a bit...see what treasures I can find.

Here's an interview in a woman's magazine.

She's nearsighted, but says it's a blessing because she's less likely to notice people staring at her. Yet she's still able to see the scary butterflies. Or maybe they were scary to her because she couldn't see them well enough.

The interview was done two weeks after she got LASIK surgery. So, now she can see. The world is less blurry for Nicole Kidman.

Her aunt has a lovely quote in the interview. She says, It doesn't matter how famous you are or what you do, your heart hurts as much as anyone else's heart. Nobody else can do the pain for you, nobody else can grow through something except you.
I think that's very true.

I like what Kidman says here about being forty. Yippee! I can't believe I made it. It feels like a long haul to get here. I'm so fine with it. People want you to have some sort of breakdown, but I'm relieved to be 40 years old, and I've lived a life.

That's how I feel. I think it's a HUGE gift to be able to reach forty. I don't dread it at all. I am a little tired of seeing all the gray hairs though. I'll admit that. But for the most part, I'm excited to be forty and fifty...sixty. I'm a little scared to be seventy. But if I'm fairly healthy and not suffering from dementia, I think it might be fun.

This interview was done before she was pregnant with Sunday. She talks about wanting to have a baby with Urban. It's nice to know that this happened for her.

Here's another woman's magazine interview with Kidman.

She sounds very much in love. It's very sweet.

Kidman had an easy labor. She's lucky.

Soon after they got married, Urban had to seek treatment for drug/alcohol abuse. They endured that together.

Kidman does a lot of work for Unifem. They work against female poverty and abuse.

All right. Now I'm going to look at Google News.

Kidman denies rumors that she plans to adopt a Vietnamese baby.

How about Twitter? Anything interesting there?

Well, sort of. But I'm too lazy to try to understand it.

I want to go play Sims 3. Tim bought if for us yesterday!