Happy Belated Birthday to Nicole Kidman!
http://feelthefilms.wordpress.com/2013/06/22/happy-belated-birthday-to -nicole-kidman/
Botox. Although few people are ever successful with it, there will always be desperate celebrities who cling to it. It’s become a cliche that botox = bad in Hollywood because a certain celebrity became known for having a “frozen forehead.” One IMDb user even went as far as saying “Someone should give her an Oscar for being able to portray any emotion after that much botox.” It’s quite sad that the same lady is also one of the most versatile, charming, talented, and beautiful women in Hollywood, Nicole Kidman. Her birthday being yesterday, I never got to properly wish her the happy birthday that an artist of her abilities deserves. Happy Birthday Nickkky!!!!
Kidman has proven her acting qualifications being on-the-go, almost always participating in a picture just about every year and producing unparalleled work. Meryl Streep is known for being the best. It’s not even a question anymore, people just associate Streep with the best actress of our time. While Streep throws herself into her tricky characters, Kidman is equally as talented with just as questionable characters. The difference here is Streep’s films go onto become acclaimed as films and Streep racks up the nominations, Kidman goes after roles that challenge her and move her forward in her career, never playing the same character twice, not caring if the film isn’t a shoo-in to capture critical acclaim.
How many actresses could conquer the complex anti-hero: the bright and bubbly, Suzanne Stone; the ever so theatrical, Satine; and the real-life, repressed and depressed author, Viriginia Woolf? One other: Kate Winslet, who’s constantly compared to Kidman and her works. As strong of an actress as Winslet is, could she play any of those roles listed above? Probably not. But could Kidman nail Rose from Titanic, Clementine from Eternal Sunshine, or Hanna Schmitz from The Reader? Most definitely, considering she was originally set to star in the latter role.
Every role I’ve had the pleasure to witness Nicole Kidman dive into head-on, has been a delight. Almost like an acting lesson. She’s one of the few actresses left in Hollywood who isn’t afraid to step out of her comfort zone and explore uncharted territory. In fact, I don’t think I could be able to put my finger on a specific “comfort zone” of her acting abilities, trying everything she’s tried, she’s earned a non-comfort zone label. There is often paparazzi attention given to her like a movie star, but while she masters the screen presence and the charm of a movie star, nothing could be further from the truth. She’s an artist, who got involved with Tom Cruise, which earned her the title.
The most impacting work of Kidman’s filmography is without a doubt, her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours. In short, it’s my favorite performance of all-time. Kidman sails through the film exploring the famous intricate mind of Virginia Woolf and making the audience understand the insanity behind the famous author. Using the brilliant words of the screenplay, Kidman never steps out of Woolf’s desperation and depression. Kidman emphasizes Woolf’s melancholy situation and the inner demons that dictate her moments of insanity. Woolf was depicted at a writing peak and it mirrors parallel to the actress’s craftsmanship portraying the character. Kidman inhabits Mrs. Dalloway first, then places Woolf on top of that which is what anchors her section of the film and allows the film to as successful was it is. Woolf was a brilliant woman, they need a brilliant performance to make her believable, and they found the right brilliant actress to play her.
The film that marked her as the number one celebrity in the world, however, came a year earlier in Baz Lurhman’s suffocating vision, Moulin Rouge!, where she played a courtesan who is proven wrong with her opinion of love. If I had to pick one performance from a movie, take it out of that movie, put in a stage version of said film, and it be just as winning work would be Kidman’s well-rounded, energetic performance as Satine. She’s fabulously theatrical from her first moments of hanging from the ceiling singing Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend, then slowly dwindling to Satine’s darker days of unforeseen pain when her love and relationship is tested and left to burn at the stake. Whenever Halle Berry won the Oscar in 2001 for Monster’s Ball, Kidman fans were rightfully outraged, thankfully she won for The Hours the next year. This is one of those instances where a “Tom Hanks” was in order, one thousand percent worthy both years and two of the greatest achievements in cinema.
But Kidman has shined brighter than disco ball on the dance floor in the ’70s in all of her other acclaimed work throughout her career. Her breakout role was her comedic, darkly-delicous turn as Suzanne Stone in To Die For. Her next big achievement was Stanley Krubick’s complicated Eyes Wide Shut, where Kidman drove the first forty minutes with expressing restrained, but powerful emotion. She added immensely to the horror genre’s acting achievements with her melodramatic and effective performance in The Others. One of my favorite works of her’s is her unique, subdued efforts in The Interpreter, which is easily her most overlooked acting in her career. She earned six-thousand dollars for her emotionally exhausted, nuanced performance in Margot at the Wedding. Her third Oscar nomination came with Rabbit Hole chilling the audience with the grief of a mother losing her young son in an unnecessary car crash. Last year, she took on a smaller, but just as delicately written role in The Paperboy, which Kidman came out a winner and saved the film from being a throwaway made for DVD flick.
Though, not every movie she’s made has been a settling success, Nicole Kidman has proved she knows human beings and how to use her life experiences to shape them into a broad range of characters she most likely has nothing in common with. She’s been underrated for the majority of her career with recognition, then became known for the wrong reasons (divorcing Tom Cruise and getting bad Botox), but ever since her “comeback” with Rabbit Hole, things are slowly growing back in her corner. She has two more films due for release in 2013, Grace of Monaco and The Railway Man, which are predicted to rock award season. Happy Belated Birthday Nicole, thank you for everything you’ve given the world already and I can’t wait for the bright future that lays ahead of your career!
When it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron.