Nicole Mary Kidman, AC (born 20 June 1967) is an Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. Following several films over the early 1990s, she came to worldwide recognition for her performances in Days of Thunder (1990), Far and Away (1992), and Batman Forever (1995). Kidman followed this with other successful films in the late 1990s, it was her performance in the musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001) which earned Kidman her second Golden Globe Award and first Academy Award nomination forBest Actress. Her performance as Virginia Woolf the following year in the drama film The Hours (2002) received critical acclaim and earned Kidman the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Kidman's other successful films include Cold Mountain (2003), The Interpreter (2005), Happy Feet (2006), and Australia (2008). Her performance in 2010's Rabbit Hole (which she also produced) earned Kidman further accolades including a subsequent Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Kidman has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF since 1994 and for UNIFEM since 2006. Kidman's work has earned her a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, three Golden Globe Awards, one BAFTA, and an Academy Award. In 2006, Kidman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, Australia's highest civilian honor, and was also the highest-paid actress in the motion picture industry. As a result of being born to Australian parents in Hawaii, Kidman has dual citizenship in Australia and the United States.
NICOLE KIDMAN BIOGRAPHY
Nicole Kidman’s first acting role was as a sheep in a school nativity play. She was five years old. By l0 she had joined an acting school and by 14 she had her first lead role in the Australian film Bush Christmas. By the time Nicole was 19 the acclaimed Hollywood director George Miller (Babe, Happy Feet) had written the TV mini-series Vietnam and Bangkok Hilton for her to star in.
Nicole says she is lucky because she knew from a very young age that she wanted to build her life around acting. Her dream has come true.
Nicole was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Australian parents Anthony (a biochemist and clinical psychologist) and Janelle (a nursing instructor). The Kidman family moved to Sydney when Nicole was three and she soon developed an early love for ballet, mime and drama. Her dedication to acting led to Australian Film Industry Award nominations when she was just 14 (BMX Bandits). She won an AFI Best Actress award at age 17 for the TV mini-series Vietnam.
Nicole first came to the attention of American audiences with her critically acclaimed performance in the riveting 1989 psychological thriller Dead Calm. She has since become an internationally recognized, award-winning actress known for her range and versatility.
In 2003, Nicole won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award and a Berlin Silver Bear for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours. (She is the only Australian to win a Best Actress Oscar.) In 2002, she was honored with her first Oscar nomination for her performance in the innovative musical, Moulin Rouge! For that role and her performance in the psychological thriller, The Others, she received dual 2002 Golden Globe nominations and won for Best Actress in a Musical. She was awarded her first Golden Globe for a pitch-perfect, wickedly funny portrayal of a woman obsessed with becoming a TV personality at all costs in To Die For, directed by Gus Van Sant. She has been nominated for Golden Globes three other times for her performances in Birth (2004), Cold Mountain (2003) and Billy Bathgate (1991).
She recently completed filming Just Go With It, slated for release in 2011, opposite Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. She starred in the film adaptation of the musical Nine with Daniel Day Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Sophia Loren and Kate Hudson. The film received a SAG nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, a BFCA nomination for Best Picture/Best Acting Ensemble and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. In 2008, Nicole reunited with her friend, Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann, and fellow Australian actor Hugh Jackman for Luhrmann’s World War II love story, Australia. In 2007, Kidman teamed with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black in Margot at the Wedding, and with Daniel Craig in a screen adaptation of the fantasy novel, The Golden Compass. She also voiced the role of Norma Jean in the Academy Award-winning animated musical Happy Feet, which reunited her with George Miller, the Australian director most responsible for launching her career. She narrated the Sundance Grand Jury Award and Audience Award-winning documentary God Grew Tired of Us, and also narrated the film biography of Simon Wiesenthal entitled I Have Never Forgotten You.
Nicole recently completed shooting Rabbit Hole, opposite Aaron Eckhart. Rabbit Hole was developed by Nicole’s Blossom Films production company and was directed by John Cameron Mitchell. The cast includes Dianne Wiest, Tammy Blanchard, Sandra Oh, Giancarlo Esposito and Jon Tenney.
Nicole made a highly lauded London stage debut in the fall of 1998, starring with Iain Glenn in The Blue Room. She won London’s Evening Standard Award and was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award in the Best Actress category. The Blue Room moved to Broadway for a sold-out, limited run in 1998-99.
Nicole says she is as excited to step onto a film set today as she was on the day she started her first movie back in Australia. She believes she is incredibly blessed, not only because she has the career she dreamed of when she was a schoolgirl but because it has exceeded her wildest expectations. As an actor she has been fortunate to travel the world and meet people from so many different cultures. Her career has given her the opportunity to cultivate an understanding of how she can best lend her support and make a difference.
In January of 2006, Nicole was awarded Australia’s highest honor, the Companion in the Order of Australia. She was also named, and continues to serve, as Goodwill Ambassador of UN Women, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, whose goals are to foster women’s empowerment and gender equality, to raise awareness of the infringement on women’s human rights around the world and to end violence against women.
Nicole serves as an Ambassador of the Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, and has served as patron of the Australian Theatre of Young People, which she attended as an aspiring young actor. She is a UNICEF Ambassador for Australia and, most recently, she voiced her support of the Women’s Cancer Program at Stanford University with Dr. Jonathan Berek. Along with her husband, Keith Urban, she helped raise nearly half a million dollars for the Women’s Cancer Program, a world-renowned center for research into the causes, treatment, prevention, and eventual cure of women’s cancer.
Award-winning actress, activist and Goodwill Ambassador, Nicole is above all things a devoted wife and mother. She is never happier than when she’s spending time with her family. She is married to country music star Keith Urban and they have a 2 daughters, Sunday Rose,3, and Faith Margaret, born in December 2010. Nicole has two teenage children, Isabella and Connor, from her first marriage to Tom Cruise.
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