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Nicole Kidman landed in Hollywood almost 30 years ago—one of her first major movie roles was 1990’s Days of Thunder, with eventual husband Tom Cruise—but with her dark, nuanced, and frankly mesmerizing performance in Big Little Lies, it’s almost as if audiences are seeing her for the first time. It’s being touted as one of the best performances of her storied career (recall she, and her prosthetic nose, won the Oscar for The Hours); the Emmy buzz is feverish . . . a good five months before the Emmys. And, lest we forget, earlier this year Kidman was Oscar-nominated for yet another stunning performance, opposite Dev Patel in Lion.
Welcome to the big, fat, full-blown Nicole Kidman career renaissance. (Just don’t call it “a revelation.”) The latest evidence: Cannes may as well rename itself the Nicole Kidman Festival, as it was revealed today that four of her projects will debut at the French film fest next month: Sofia Coppola’s remake of the 1971 film The Beguiled, about a girls boarding school in the Confederate South; the dysfunctional family drama The Killing of a Sacred Deer; John Cameron Mitchell’s sci-fi film How to Talk to Girls at Parties; and, on the heels of BLL, another much-hyped TV project: Jane Campion’s second season of Top of the Lake.
That a 49-year-old veteran actress is the hottest thing in Hollywood right now is pretty fantastic to behold—and it’s a win for all of Kidman’s colleagues, too. Contrary to Amy Schumer’s infamous and gloriously biting “last fuckable day” sketch, Kidman’s boom proves that “over 40” shouldn’t be considered “old for Hollywood” (sort of like the human equivalent of dog years). Her success—and the enthusiasm around it on Twitter every Sunday night during BLL—proves once again that audiences don’t tire of true talent, and producers and directors shouldn’t either. It says a seasoned actress getting better and better with age is as exciting, if not more exciting, than yet another It girl making the rounds. And, as an aside, it also shows that an icky tabloid divorce doesn’t have to define a woman forever. Shine on, Nicole Kidman; Hollywood needs you.
