Friday, October 4, 2013

Nicole Kidman - 1967

                 
Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were temporarily in the United States on educational visas. Kidman can therefore claim citizenship in Australia and the United States. Her father, Antony David Kidman, is a biochemist, clinical psychologist, and author. Her mother, Janelle Ann (née Glenny), is a nursing instructor who edits her husband's books and was a member of the Women's Electoral Lobby. Kidman's ancestry includes Scottish and Irish. At the time of Kidman's birth, her father was a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He soon became a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health of the United States. Opposed to the war in Vietnam, which was causing social unrest in both Australia and the United States, Kidman's parents participated in anti-war protests while they were living in Washington, D.C. The family returned to Australia when Kidman was four and her parents now live on Sydney's North Shore. Kidman has a younger sister, Antonia Kidman, a journalist and TV presenter. Kidman attended Lane Cove Public School and North Sydney Girls' High School. She was enrolled in ballet at three and showed her natural talent for acting in her primary and high school years. Kidman revealed she was timid as a child, saying, "I am very shy – really shy – I even had a stutter as a kid, which I slowly got over, but I still regress into that shyness. So I don’t like walking into a crowded restaurant by myself; I don’t like going to a party by myself." In 1984, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, which caused Kidman to temporarily halt her education and help provide for the family by working as a massage therapist at age seventeen. She studied at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Victoria, and at the Phillip Street Theatre in Sydney, with actress and friend Naomi Watts who had attended the same high school. This was followed by attending the Australian Theatre for Young People. Here she took up drama, mime and performing in her teens, finding acting to be a refuge.

Due to her fair skin and naturally red hair, the Australian sun forced the young Kidman to rehearse in halls of the theatre. A regular at the Phillip Street Theatre, she received both encouragement and praise to pursue acting full-time.A dual citizen of Australia and the United States - she was born on June 20, 1967 to Australian parents in Hawaii - Kidman spent her earliest years in Washington, D.C. before returning to Australia, where her father maintained a career as a biochemist and psychologist and her mother was a nursing instructor. Her performing career got an early start with ballet training at three and showed a natural talent for acting in her primary and high school years. In 1983, she debuted in the Australian kids' action-comedy, "BMX Bandits;" she soon made for an engaging juvenile lead in the popular holiday feature "Bush Christmas" (1983) and 12 episodes of the family series "Five Mile Creek" (7 Network, 1983-85). In 1984, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, which caused her to temporarily halt her higher education and help provide for the family by working as a massage therapist at age 17. Kidman appeared in the 2009 Rob Marshall musical Nine, portraying the Federico Fellini-like character's muse, Claudia Jenssen. She was featured alongside fellow Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz and Sophia Loren. Kidman's, whose screen time was brief compared to the other actresses, performed the musical number "Unusual Way" alongside Day-Lewis. Although the film was released to mixed reviews, it received several Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, and earned Kidman a fourth Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, as part of the Outstanding Cast. In 2010, she starred with Aaron Eckhart in the film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole, for which she vacated her role in the Woody Allen picture You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. She lent her voice to a promotional video that Australia used to support its bid to host the 2018 World Cup.TV Guide reported in 2008 that Kidman will star in The Danish Girl, a film adaptation of the novel of the same name, playing Lili Elbe, the world's first postoperative transsexual. Screen Daily reported that shooting would begin in Germany in July 2011.

However the project has been delayed following the exit of the director, Lasse Hallström and Kidman's co-star Rachel Weisz.In 2009, Variety said that she would produce and star in a film adaptation of the Chris Cleave novel Little Bee, in association with BBC Films.In June 2010, TV Guide announced that Kidman and Clive Owen will star in an HBO film about Ernest Hemingway and his relationship with Martha Gellhorn. entitled Hemingway & Gellhorn. The film, directed by Philip Kaufman, began shooting in March 2011, with an air date scheduled for 2012. She also starred alongside Nicolas Cage in director Joel Schumacher's action-thriller Trespass, with the stars playing a married couple taken hostage. On 17 September 2010, ontactMusic. com said Kidman would return to Broadway to portray Alexandra Del Lago in David Cromer's revival of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth, with Scott Rudin producing. On 30 August 2011, Cromer spoke to The New York Times and explained that the production would not meet its original fall 2011 revival date but that it remains an active project. In June 2011, Kidman was cast in Lee Daniels' adaptation of the Pete Dexter novel, The Paperboy; she began filming on the thriller on 1 August 2011, and The Paperboy was released in 2012. In the film, she portrayed death row groupie Charlotte Bless, and performed sex scenes that she claims not to have remembered until seeing the finished film. "I was like okay, so that's what I did," she said. Kidman co-starred in Park Chan-wook's Stoker (2013).In April 2012, various sources, including Variety, announced that Kidman was in talks to star in upcoming Grace Kelly biopic Grace of Monaco. The film will focus on the 1962 crisis, in which Charles de Gaulle blockaded the tiny principality, angered by Monaco's status as a tax haven for wealthy French subjects. In 2012, Kidman's audiobook recording of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse was released at Audible.com. In April 2013 she was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

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