Nicole Kidman Exposed

Nicole Kidman’s new film, Babygirl, opens with a scene moviegoers may think they have seen many times before — an actress having a very pretty orgasm. For a global movie star with five Oscar nominations and two Emmys, you might even consider the opening risqué. But it’s what follows that reveals Kidman to be in fresh cinematic territory and why she calls this role “a calling.” In subsequent scenes, director Halina Reijn divulges that the intended audience for the opening breathy performance had been the character’s handsome, loving husband (Antonio Banderas) — and Kidman delivers other, much more feral climaxes without him. In the A24 movie, a gender-flipped love letter to erotic thrillers like 9½ Weeks and Basic Instinct, Kidman plays a powerful CEO, wife and mother whose attraction to a brazen young male intern (Harris Dickinson) threatens to blow up her Instagram-perfect life.

It’s a bracingly vulnerable performance, provocative even for the woman who raised eyebrows 25 years ago with Eyes Wide Shut, and a role that caps a year in which Kidman is, seemingly, everywhere. Her six 2024 projects include the soapy Netflix murder mystery The Perfect Couple, which became the most watched original streaming series in the U.S. in September; the Taylor Sheridan spy thriller series Lioness on Paramount+; and Lulu Wang’s prestige drama series for Amazon Prime, Expats. The crush of output is thanks in part to a scheduling quirk caused by the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, but it also reflects the rarefied position in which Kidman finds herself at age 57, more in demand than ever. (See exclusive photos of the star.)

While much of Hollywood seems to have seen the hiring of more women in roles of creative leadership as a post-#MeToo talking point, Kidman has taken on the task in earnest, working with a stunning 21 female directors in the past seven years as an actress or a producer. “She is one of the few people who practices what she preaches when it comes to feminism and empowering women,” Reijn says. She also has locked arms with female co-producers like Reese Witherspoon on HBO’s Big Little Lies and Jamie Lee Curtis, who is producing the upcoming Amazon Prime series Scarpetta, in which Kidman plays the title character from Patricia Cornwell’s book series about a medical examiner. (“I’m learning all about autopsies,” Kidman says. “I know where all the body parts are.”)

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