‘Please, give me the chance’: The breakout role Nicole Kidman had to beg for

Talking with Casey Affleck, her co-star in the flick, for Variety’s Actors On Actors series, the 49-year-old’s admission came out during a candid conversation about how she lost the desire to act after marrying Tom Cruise in 1990.

“I’d came to the states and I’d done stuff and I fell in love and I got married and that was really ... I’m always driven by love so I can be taken way off my course of, ‘Hey, I want to be an actor’. I go, ‘Oh, now I’m in love, yeah! I’m gonna go do this because this is way more fun’.”

Affleck probed further and asked Kidman if she worked less after marrying Cruise in 1990.

“Yeah, and also my desire I think (got refocused),” she admitted. “And then I kind of got antsy and was like, ‘Gosh I wish I had something, like a great character like I had in Australia when I was young and when I was, like, 15. And then To Die For came along. But no one thought I could do it and I think the studio didn’t want me and it sort of went through another bunch of actors.”

Kidman, who was 28 at the time, then called director Gus Van Sant and begged.

“I said, ‘Please, give me the chance. I beg you. Because the writing was so strong. Buck Henry — I mean, come on. Talk about great writing,” she said.

Later in the chat, Kidman said the experience on To Die For was a turning point in her career, and she started being more selective about the films she acted in.

“Well then I kind of stumbled into Jane Campion and Stanley Kubrick. I kind of went into, ‘Oh, OK, I’m gonna seek out the people that I connect with and who have great minds.”