Last weekend, after receiving the American Film Institute’s (AFI) Lifetime Achievement Award, Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman opened up about the challenges she faced on her journey to stardom. She admitted that it wasn’t easy and involved a lot of “blood, sweat, and tears.” She also discussed how she incorporated a terrifying reaction she had when she saw her biological father pass away – shaking and laughing uncontrollably – into her acting.
Nicole Kidman, the 56-year-old Hollywood star, was born in Hawaii and grew up in Sydney, Australia. She made her acting debut at the age of 15. During an interview on the red carpet at the AFI awards ceremony, Nicole shared her early aspirations, saying, “I had a dream of working all around the world, and I knew I wanted to act. I knew at 6 or 7 years old that I wanted to act. I didn’t know I would have the opportunities I’ve had… I just kept pursuing acting relentlessly.”
Nicole ultimately won an Oscar, two Emmy Awards, and six Golden Globe Awards. In 2001, she received an Oscar nomination for her role in “Moulin Rouge!” and won the Best Actress award at the 75th Academy Awards for “The Hours” in 2002.
Recalling her journey, Nicole shared, “My mom wrote me a beautiful card, she and my sister sent it to me, saying she had been through it all with me. The calls, the rejections, the peaks… from Cannes suddenly becoming a big success with ‘Moulin Rouge!’… to the Oscars, the Golden Globes, everything. She—along with my dad—was by my side every step… so she documented it all in that card.”
“I remember there was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears even though it may seem easy, it was not,” she added.
Recently, Nicole has been involved in the TV series “Expats” and the movie “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.” According to People magazine, at an Amazon Prime event on the 28th, Nicole spoke about a scene in “Expats” where she had to identify a child’s body in a morgue, triggering memories of her father’s passing.
“We were in the morgue for filming, and when we were told our son was there… I just said, ‘I’ve got to try to do something here that’s actually my lived experience’—not about me in a morgue, but when my father passed away, I laughed uncontrollably,” Nicole said.
Describing the moment her father fell and passed away in 2014, she said, “When I saw him pass, my heart broke… my reaction was horrific, I started shaking, I started laughing. I thought, ‘This is what Margaret felt.'” She later channeled those real emotions into her performance.
Nicole recalled her mother’s shock at her terrifying reaction, saying, “My mom looked at me, she had to slap me in the face and say, ‘Nicole, pull yourself together.’ Because my brain had short-circuited, she said ‘pull yourself together’ so many times.”