Nicole Kidman

Biography

This tall, striking, red-haired Australian actress already had a career of some substance when she gained notoriety in the USA as the second wife of superstar Tom Cruise. Check out her nude gallery here.

Kidman began ballet lessons at age three, mime classes at age eight and acting at ten in street theater. She first gained notice for her performance in "Bush Christmas" (1983), a film that became a holiday perennial on Aussie TV, and won acclaim for her work in the Australian miniseries "Vietnam" (1985) and "Bangkok Hilton" (1989). Nicole found an international audience playing a terrorized woman on the high seas in the Philip Noyce helmed thriller "Dead Calm" (1989). She made her Hollywood debut as a fetching brain surgeon opposite Cruise as a racecar driver in "Days of Thunder" (1990).

Kidman worked regularly in Hollywood thereafter, playing mob moll Drew Preston in Robert Benton's uneven "Billy Bathgate" (1991), where she exuded a raw sexuality heretofore hidden from American audiences. Though she claims to have learned much from working with old pro Dustin Hoffmann on the project, her bankability was not enhanced by the film's commercial failure. A reteaming with Cruise in Ron Howard's would-be epic, "Far and Away" (1992), also failed to ignite the box office. Although she acquitted herself in two high-profile 1993 features: "Malice", playing a classic femme fatale opposite an equally smarmy Alec Baldwin, and "My Life", a high-minded tearjerker with Michael Keaton, neither proved a popular success.

Nicole Kidman had a banner year in 1995, playing the female lead opposite Val Kilmer in the sequel "Batman Forever" and starring in "To Die For", a much smaller scale Gus Van Sant-directed comedy thriller that created a sensation at Cannes. In the former, she was cast as a glamorous criminal psychologist attracted to Batman/Bruce Wayne. In the latter, Kidman shone opposite Matt Dillon as a TV weathercaster with murderous designs on her husband.

She followed with a starring role as the Henry James heroine Isabel Archer in Jane Campion's film adaptation of "The Portrait of a Lady" (1996) and the female lead opposite George Clooney in "The Peacemaker" (1997). She and Cruise committed to playing a couple experiencing marital troubles in Stanley Kubrick's anticipated "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999). While the film failed to live up to the expectations of some audience members, Kidman garnered newfound respect from critics for her honest portrayal of a slightly manipulative wife.

Kidman had further proved her mettle with a stage stint in both London and New York City in the play "The Blue Room" in 1998. When she returned to the big screen in 2001, it was in a pair of movies that demonstrated her versatility and skill. In the frenetic "Moulin Rouge!", Kidman offered a lovely turn as a courtesan who finds true love with a penniless writer. Not only did she display her comedic abilities, but her role as Satine called upon her to sing and dance and she and co-star Ewan McGregor both acquited themselves nicely.

Later that same year, she delivered an old-fashioned glamorous portrayal of a high-strung mother struggling to keep her life together during WWII in the supernatural thriller "The Others". With her hair dyed blonde, Kidman called to mind the heroines of many Hitchcock movies, particularly Grace Kelly.

Although her professional career was soaring, her personal life suffered a setback when Cruise, her husband of almost ten years, filed for divorce and then went public with his relationship with his "Vanilla Sky" co-star Penelope Cruz.

Undaunted, Nicole Kidman perservered and could be seen at the multiplexes in 2002 as a Russian mail-order bride in the dark comedy-drama "Birthday Girl" and as English novelist Virginia Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham's novel "The Hours".

Pics

Nude pictures from:
Billy Bathgate (1991)

Naked clips from:
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)