Hello! Magazine has excerpts from Nicole Kidman’s supposedly personal diary, written while she was working on the set Baz Luhrman’s upcoming epic, Australia, before she was pregnant with Sunday. Kidman’s narrative has a lot of poetic descriptions, and she seems to feel everything deeply and be oh so moved by it. It comes off as affected at first, as if she’s writing for an audience, and I had some trouble adjusting to her style. Maybe she’s one of those people who is very sensory-oriented and finds a lot of significance in small things. She does goes on and on about how she feels, which is what a diary is for. I can’t help but thinking she shouldn’t have released it to the public, even though it’s likely she wrote it for that purpose.
Describing a moment
It is magical late in the afternoon standing in the warm breeze, surrounded by the twin sisters [mountains] with the sun disappearing, with King George [David Gulpilil] doing his chanting and singing. I just try to breathe it in, hold it close, savour the moment and make it a memory. I sometimes think I am putting together a montage of my life’s moments that will flicker before my eyes just before I die. I hope this can be one of those moments.On her career
I’m just really glad that I’m here working on a magnificent piece of art, concentrating on what I do, knowing what I do, and feeling grateful for having a great role. It’s amazing how you live between huge successes, huge bombs and everything in between. I try to walk through these and just focus on having a great role.On wanting to have a baby
Also today I am feeling a huge urge – was it the lunar eclipse? – to have a baby. I would love to have a baby in my tummy. Sigh. We’ll see, one day, what God has in store. I don’t know why I am feeling that right now but yeah, I would like to see that tummy grow. I think I was looking at Brandon and this little aboriginal baby, Angelica, on the set and feeling all that maternal pull. Big.On missing her two children
Driving home there was a mother and a tiny little joey kangaroo just freshly killed on the road. There’s a lot of road kill, but seeing the joey – it just hit me. I’m feeling wistful. I’m missing my children… missing seeing their faces, kissing their heads.On her husband, Keith, loving her unconditionally
Keith’s here, feet up, on the computer. He says hi. We had a conversation today, grappling with the state of yearning and existing in a place of happiness, but with desires to keep growing. He has a lovely phrase: ‘Learning to want what you have’.Keith gives me huge strength today. It is good. I need it. A lot of my insecurities are attached to the thought that I am loved only for what I’ve achieved, so when I believe and know that he loves me no matter what I do or where I go or what I achieve or what I don’t achieve, it’s such an extraordinary thing to accept.
On the director, Baz Luhrman, being her “creative partner”
The mood on the set is changing. Hugh has gone off for a few days and now I have to hit David Wenham with a whip. Everything came to a head and I had a heart-to-heart talk with Baz. How can I go on? This is too hard. But now I am going home to have a good sleep. That always helps. I know I will feel better about things tomorrow…I speak to Baz about feeling shaky in my confidence, and he whispers to me that it’s the best place to be. To be in that state means you are truly an artist, he says, and you need unrest and disturbance; shaking confidence and shaky self-esteem. I ask him if he feels like that. Is he shaky in his confidence and in his vision? He looks at me with his big brown eyes and nods, and I feel deeply intimate with him. I feel really, really strongly that I am with my creative partner – and that is a lovely place to be.
[From Hello! Magazine, print edition, November 4, 2008]
That’s only a small part of a long article with excerpts from Kidman’s diary each day she was on location for the film in Australia. After I read through everything I had a little more sympathy for Kidman and wasn’t as skeptical as when I first starting sifting through her flowery prose while rolling my eyes. She’s an actress, after all, and she emotes for a living. It seems to come naturally to her even if it strikes some people as affected. There’s one thing you can say for Kidman – she’s a smart woman and a competent writer. She has a nearly four month old daughter now, Sunday Rose, a child she yearned for deeply. She’ll tell you all about it too, her eyes wide while she looks off in the distance dramatically.
Nicole Kidman is shown at “Women in Hollywood Event” at the Four Seasons Hotel in LA on 10/6/08. Credit: Nikki Nelson/ WENN
