My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

https://decider.com/wp-content/uploa...rip=all&w=1200

Probably the most breathtaking of all of Hollywood's Australian imports, but that rarest of rare Hollywood treasures...a beautiful woman who actually can act. Her career was initially put on the back burner thanks to her marriage to Tom Cruise, but once she cut Cruise loose, her career went into the stratosphere as one of Hollywood's most bankable and busiest leading ladies. Her versatility as an actress is clearly evidenced in her resume...drama, comedy, musicals, movies, television, there's just nothing this woman can't do. Her career which began in 1983 has so far earned her an Emmy, 14 Golden Globe nominations, 4 Golden Globes, four Oscar nominations, and one Oscar. Here we go...these are my favorite performances of the one and only Nicole Kidman.

You do know she’s American-born?

Yes, but she was raised in Australia

25.

Devlin Adams, Just Go With It

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cc/65...5a8298bcc5.jpg

Kidman really seemed to be enjoying herself in this 2011 re-thinking of the 1969 film Cactus Flower, playing the old high school rival of a dental assistant (Jennifer Aniston) who are reunited during a Hawaiian vacation.

24.

Claudia, Nine

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....I%2BL._AC_.jpg

Kidman made the most of a thankless role in this elaborate all-star cast musical playing a self-absorbed actress who has been pegged to star in the latest untitled film by a celebrated Italian movie director named Guido Contini (Daniel Day Lewis).

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

⬆️ I hate musicals, but I did enjoy Nine.

23.

Faunia farley, The Human Stain

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BPKFA6/nic...003-BPKFA6.jpg

Kidman was cast against type but still rose to the occasion as a promiscuous divorcee who becomes romantically involved with a much older college professor (Anthony Hopkins) with a mysterious past.

I've not seen any of these so far, but...I'm betting that's the second hottest pic of Nicole you post. It's actually the lighting that's stunning.

22.

Nancy Eamons, Boy Erased

https://www.wmagazine.com/wp-content...=1536px,1152px

Kidman gave a thankless role substance as the quietly heartbroken mother of a gay son (Lucas Hedges) who stands by silently while her husband (Russell Crowe) commits her son to a rehabilitation program that claims they can turn her son into a heterosexual in 12 days.

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

21.

Dr. Claire Lewicki, Days of Thunder

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8d/d0...330f848454.jpg

Kidman was appropriately decorative as a snooty doctor who finds herself attracted to a hot-headed stock car driver (Tom Cruise) who becomes one of her patients.

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

I like this thread already! Ive got my own favourites, and the Hours is on my list to watch, but Ill let you finish before I chip in!

20.

Yvonne Pendleton, The Upside

https://es.web.img3.acsta.net/pictur...38/0835318.jpg

Kidman's crisp performance once again enhanced a thankless role as the tightly wound personal assistant to a paraplegic millionaire (Bryan Cranston) who is very wary of her boss' new hire as a personal caregiver (Kevin Hart).

19.

Rae Ingram, Dead Calm

https://horrornews.net/wp-content/up...89-Movie-3.jpg

Probably the first film that made people sit up and take notice of Nicole. She plays a young married woman who finds herself and her husband (Sam Neill) being held hostage on their own boat by a dangerous psychopath (Billy Zane). This one put Zane on the map as well.

I love musicals and I thought Nine was seriously mediocre.

18.

Gail Jones, My Life

https://see-aych.com/90s-movies/wp-c...ole-kidman.jpg

I think one of Nicole Kidman's most underrated performances was in this contemporary tearjerker who finds out almost simultaneously that she is pregnant with her first child and that her husband (Michael Keaton) is dying. I was a puddle after my first viewing of this movie.

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

shes not my favorite actress but loved her on moulin rouge https://i.gifer.com/OmQ1.gif https://hips.hearstapps.com/digitals...p&resize=1200:https://i.gifer.com/SCHd.gifhttps://data.whicdn.com/images/140563859/original.gif

You mean in Moulin Rouge?

Daniel Day Lewis made the movie for him. He was so compelling IMO.

17.

Anna, Birth

https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content...4/03/birth.jpg

Despite an unflattering pixie haircut, Kidman worked very hard to be convincing in this bizarre film about a glamourous about to be married socialite who meets a young boy (Cameron Bright) who claims to be her reincarnated first husband, who died ten years ago.

16.

Gretchen Carlson, Bombshell

https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-cont.../Bombshell.jpg

A breathtaking Nicole made the most of her underwritten role in this glossy docudrama chronicling the years of sexual harassment that went on behind the scenes at FOX news. Nicole plays Gretchen Carlson, an on air correspondent who went public with their allegations and was instantly fired.

15.

Princess Grace, Grace of Monaco

https://www.pedestrian.tv/content/up...80-637x380.jpg

Talk about a perfect melding of actress and character, Kidman lit up the screen in this quiet docudrama about the beginning of Grace's rein as Princess which was actually challenged when the obsessed Alfred Hitchcock actually flew to Monaco to persuade Grace to return to the silver screen in his new film Marnie.

14.

Margot, Margot at the Wedding

https://static.rogerebert.com/upload...11200305AR.jpg

Kidman was superb in this offbeat Noah Baumbach black comedy playing an uptight single divorced mom who travels to her sister's wedding, which reveals long hidden resentments between Margot and her sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh), instant resentment of her future brother-in-law (Jack Black) and a tense reunion with her ex (John Turturro). This is one of the more unlikable characters Kidman has played but she nails it.

13.

Nicolla, Flirting

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...2ODc@._V1_.jpg

Kidman shines in one of her earliest performances as a bitchy prep school student whose outward hostile interior is covering a smoldering sexuality bursting into fruition.

Good movie.

12.

Grace Margaret Mulligan, Dogville

https://mk0maramarietta4qeb3.kinstac...-von-trier.jpg

Kidman was powerfully understated in this imaginatively mounted drama playing a woman on the run from the mob and finding refuge in a small Colorado town, where her presence brings conflict throughout the town because of the danger her presence might be bringing to the community.

11.

Anna Murphy, The Killing of a Sacred Deer

https://theplaylist.net/wp-content/u...their-eyes.jpg

Another performance where Kidman brings more to the performance than the screenplay gives her. She plays the wife of a brilliant surgeon (Colin Ferrell) who finds herself helpless when her family is being destroyed by the son of a former patient of her husband's (Barry Keoghan).

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

I know I rarely watch films she's in, but I'm a little surprised by how busy she's been in the last 20 years. :D

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

Dogville & Sacred Deer were 2 great vehicles for her.

Stirchley, you and I might be the only two people on the planet who have seen The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Yeah, that adds up. 🙄

Huh. I’ve loved every movie from this Greek director. I thought more people here had seen it.

10.

Alice Harford, Eyes Wide Shot

https://assets.vogue.com/photos/5d70...ole-kidman.jpg

Kidman was robbed of an Oscar nomination for her provocative performance in the final film directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick. Kidman is sex on legs as a wife and mother whose extra-marital affair sends her husband (Tom Cruise) on his own bizarre sexual odyssey.

9.

Celeste Wright, Big Little Lies

https://theplaylist.net/wp-content/u...ittle-Lies.jpg

Kidman won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her work in this HBO limited series. KIdman was effective cast against type as a soft-spoken attorney who is the mother of twin boys who has spent her entire marriage trying to cover up the fact that her husband (Alekssander Sarsgaard) has been physically abusing her forever. Kidman hasn't had a lot of experience playing such a meek and submissive character, but she totally nailed it.

My favorite rôle of hers, I think.

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

Two of my favourites right there. Eyes Wide Shut is possibly my favourite Kubrick (I change my mind all the time on this and the Shining). Big Little Lies, she was fantastic, first series especially. The scene at the marriage counsellor when she is in complete denial is one of the worst things Ive ever watched. In a good way!

8.

Virginia Woolf, The Hours

https://i.insider.com/5c5ddc93eb3ce8...jpeg&auto=webp

Nicole Kidman won her only Oscar to date for her performance as the suicidal 19th century writer Virginia Woolf. It's a solid performance, but personally, I think the actress has done better work, evidenced by the ranking of this performance, but leaving it off this list would have been wrong.

7.

Becca, Rabbit Hole


https://memegenerator.net/img/images...0/16830408.jpg


Kidman gave one of her most gut-wrenching performances in this often powerful melodrama about a woman whose child was killed by a hit and run driver. Her inconsolable grief has put a gulf between Becca and her husband (Aaron Eckhart) that grows wider when she develops a friendship with the young man who was driving the car that killed her child (Miles Teller). This performance earned Kidman her third Oscar nomination.

Maybe we have seen it and we just don't talk about it because it's not that good (at the very least, that's how I feel about it).

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

I first remember seeing her in Batman Forever and she was stunning there.

My favourite performance from her is in Rabbit Hole.

Also wanna give a shout out to the great performance in Paddington.

She was the best thing about Batman Forever

I think I watched it some years back, more because I found the name funny than anything else

It's funny you should mention the title, because one of the first things that crossed my mind as the credits rolled was "What the hell does the title mean?"

https://consequenceofsound.net/wp-co...squeeze-me.gif

https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m...vm25o1_500.gif

6.

Tracy, Malice

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...2ODc@._V1_.jpg


Kidman made an intelligent damsel in distress as a married woman who has been having difficulty getting pregnant and finds her life thrown into a tailspin when she is operated on by an arrogant and enigmatic surgeon (Alec Baldwin).

5

Aline Bernstein, Genius

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/...lip-bright.jpg

Kidman offers one of her most chilling performances in this fact-based drama as a wealthy divorcee whose affair with writer Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) hits a snag when he starts spending too much time with his publisher, Max Perkins (Colin Firth).

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

I think I might have maybe seen Genius. Not sure, as I haven't seen Nicole in much of anything except the Princess Grace flick. I'll keep following the thread:)

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

Even though she's really good in Margot At The Wedding, I detest that movie with every fiber of my being. It's a dreadfully boring and irritating display of a miserable bunch of characters you couldn't care less about what happens to them. You can write a movie full of narcissists if you manage to make them interesting or have some kind of justifiable motivations for their behavior, but you don't get that here.

She's excellent in Dead Calm and Eyes Wide Shut, and those movie deserve her hard effort more. Eyes Wide Shut is one of my favorite Kubrick movies in fact.
I've seen The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. I liked it.

I hope her performance in Moulin Rouge! makes it on here. She's absolutely spellbinding in it.

I loved this movie.

Hated this movie.

4.

Miss Martha, The Beguiled

https://media1.fdncms.com/ntslo/imag...126b45c73d.jpg

Kidman was the best thing about Sofia Coppola's remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film. She plays the stern headmistress of a small girls' school in the south whose school is thrown for a loop when a wounded soldier (Colin Farrell) is found and brought back to the school to nurse his wounds.

3.

Grace, The Others

https://thestarsworldwide.com/wp-con...2020/10/ni.jpg

Kidman was bone-chilling in this psychological thriller playing a woman who lives in a large mansion with her two children who comes to believe the mansion is haunted.

2.

Satine, Moulin Rouge

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2TGAoeR9_AA/maxresdefault.jpg

Nicole was dazzling in this Baz Lehrman musical that afforded the opportunity to sing and dance and earned her an Oscar nomination to boot. She plays a French courtesan who finds herself being courted by a penniless playwright (Ewan McGregor) and a wealthy Duke (Richard Roxburgh).


Well, finally down to # 2...sorry it took so long. Actually anyone who follows my threads with any regularity should already know what #1 is...drum roll...and now my #1 favorite performance of the divine Nicole Kidman:

1.

Suzanne Stone, To Die For

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/EF8AYJ/nic...995-EF8AYJ.jpg

This performance also topped my list of Sexiest Female Movie Characters. Kidman plays a small town woman who wants to be the next Barbara Walters but finds her ambitions being stifled by her dumb as a box of rocks husband (Matt Dillon). She decides to get him out of the way be seducing a horny high school student (Joaquin Phoenix) and getting him to murder her husband for him. Kidman is mesmerizing in this performance. I think this might be the performance that made me come up with a phrase I have often used to describe certain performances..."Sex on legs."





Hope someone enjoyed the list

Congrats on finishing your list, Gideon. It's been a bit of an odd one for me as (as mentioned earlier in the thread) I didn't know/notice that she'd been so busy of the last 20 years. That said, I have seen your top 3 performances from her so, as I suspected, there's little need to see the rest. :D Something I could probably replicate with any actor/actress/genre/films of last 20 years. :)

I agree with you completely.;)

I hated Nicole Kidman in Paddington. She's over-the-top in the most obnoxiously theatrical way. The only one of her performances I can't stand.

Glad to see Moulin Rouge make second place!

You haven't seen Nicole really over the top unless you've seen the remake of The Stepford Wives or the film version of Bewitched.

Re: My Favorite Nicole Kidman Performances
 

I like Nicole in Australia and The Others.

Mine is at the oscars when ever she loses to other actors