Playboy Interview: Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman would keep any guy on his toes. In the past four years alone, the elegantly sexy five-foot-10-and-a-half-inch Kidman has starred in 10 movies, earning two Golden Globes, two Oscar nominations for best actress and the 2002 Academy Award for The Hours and making waves with Moulin Rouge and The Others. For a lark, she also notched a hit British single by duetting with Robbie Williams on the old-school Frank and Nancy Sinatra ditty "Somethin' Stupid" in the same year she and Ewan McGregor won airplay warbling "Come What May" from Moulin Rouge. She has been voted by international magazine readers as one of the five sexiest women in the movies, shot up 52 spots on Premiere magazine's list of Hollywood's most powerful people and saw her per-movie salary climb to $17.5 million for the new suspense thriller The Interpreter, co-starring Sean Penn.

Of course, there was also that day in 2001 when husband Tom Cruise served her with divorce papers shortly after their 10th anniversary. "Nic knows exactly why we are getting the divorce. But she's the mother of our children, and I wish her well," Cruise said at the time. The international press kicked into overdrive speculating on the "exactly why." Rumors ranged from Cruise's unease with Kidman's career, to Kidman's unease with raising their two adopted kids (Isabella Jane, born in 1992, and Connor Antony, born in 1995) as Scientologists, to Cruise's long-speculated-over sexuality, to Kidman's alleged affair with Moulin Rouge co-star McGregor. Although both parties have maintained silence about the reasons for the divorce, Cruise subsequently romanced (and later split with) Penélope Cruz, while Kidman has since been linked romantically with producer Steve Bing, Tobey Maguire, Q-Tip and Lenny Kravitz. She won substantial damages and a public apology from a British newspaper that claimed she'd had an adulterous affair with Jude Law.

Born Nicole Mary Kidman in 1967 in Honolulu to a biochemist father, Anthony, and a nursing-instructor mother, Janelle, Kidman and her parents relocated almost immediately to Washington, D.C., where her father pursued breast cancer research. Three years later they moved to a conservative upper-middle-class neighborhood in their native Sydney, Australia, where Anthony became a psychologist. Nicole, growing up with her younger sister, Antonia (currently an Australian TV producer and host), was so fair-haired and inward that she spent much of her childhood shielded from the sun, studying ballet, feeding her imagination with weighty novels and daydreaming. But then, at 16, Kidman stunned her academician parents by dropping out of high school to pursue acting.

She got her first big break starring as the young wife of 40-ish Sam Neill in the 1989 seafaring thriller Dead Calm, the flick that brought her to the attention of Cruise, who approved her as his leading lady in the high-profile 1990 racetrack drama Days of Thunder. The chemistry between them crackled (offscreen, anyway), and following Cruise's divorce from actress Mimi Rogers, Kidman and Cruise married in Telluride, Colorado on Christmas Eve 1990.

At first, major stardom eluded her, but as Mrs. Tom Cruise, Kidman was hounded by photographers, especially when with her beaming husband on red carpets. Things changed in 1998 when Kidman scorched live theater audiences in David Hare's two-person play The Blue Room, which included a 10-second glimpse of her nude posterior in muted light. One British critic hailed her as "pure theatrical Viagra." Kidman's heated-up sexual profile ignited when she and Cruise spent 15 months making Stanley Kubrick's erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut, released in 1999.

Kidman's breakthrough as a box office attraction came in 2001 when she starred in both Baz Luhrmann's hopped-up musical Moulin Rouge and the quietly creepy ghost story The Others. On the downside, Kidman, apparently blindsided by her divorce, suffered a miscarriage of a baby she claimed in divorce proceedings was Cruise's. She emerged from the aftermath with a multimillion-dollar settlement, shared custody of the two children and the aura of being the bigger person. She also came out looking like the bigger actor, going on to give bold performances in The Hours, Dogville, The Human Stain and Cold Mountain.

Although reluctant to talk to journalists, Kidman met with writer Stephen Rebello in Los Angeles during a weekend break from filming opposite Will Ferrell in a big-screen version of the 1960s TV show Bewitched. Rebello reports: "One minute she's describing her love of such thrill-seeking adventures as skydiving, and the next she's talking about the intricacies of Russian novels. She can be provocative one second and church-lady-like the next. While she's fascinating and alluring, she doesn't do a thing to work it. She doesn't need to."

[Q] Playboy: Since early in your career you haven't shied away from nudity.

[A] Kidman: Which is a dichotomy in terms of the way I dress and the way I am. But that's because of my belief in acting as an art form. I would pose nude for Picasso because of my belief in the art form. Sexuality and nudity are a huge part of our lives. When that's put into a script, it's an important part of a story, of understanding a character, and it is not my place to censor the role. At the same time, I have to be in the right hands. It has to be delicate. I have to feel that it is art. I would be horrified, humiliated and embarrassed if I felt exploited. I won't allow that to happen.

[Q] Playboy: Still, many American movie actresses get squeamish about doing nude scenes.

[A] Kidman: I think that's an awful thing to feel. I mean, I'm not going, "Gosh, I can't wait," because it's really difficult. I can understand the hesitation for someone in a relationship. If I was in a strong relationship, I don't know if I would want to do it again. You're giving a part of yourself, so there are times when you say, "I don't know if I want to go into that." But at this moment of my life I'm not there. At the same time, my sensibilities tend to be European because of coming from Australia and having spent a lot of time in Europe. I work well with European directors, and you know, that's just part of it.

[Q] Playboy: You may not see yourself as a sexual person, but most of the world disagrees. One British critic called your presence in the 1998 play The Blue Room "pure theatrical Viagra."

[A] Kidman: I thought that was quite sweet and funny. I was not at all offended.

[Q] Playboy: People were paying big bucks to score the seats where your physical charms were more easily glimpsed.

[A] Kidman: I found that slightly ridiculous, to be honest, because I was nude for 10 seconds.

[Q] Playboy: Do you enjoy it when people praise your physical charms, such as your bottom?

[A] Kidman: No. I would like Jennifer Lopez's butt. I think hers is cute.

[Q] Playboy: Some women find J. Lo or, say, Angelina Jolie as sexy as men do. Is J. Lo a woman you'd be curious to kiss?

[A] Kidman: No, I don't want to kiss her. I don't want to kiss somebody I know. I'm quiet about my fantasies. In a strange way I'm a sensualist. I love smells. I love to touch things. I love to taste things. The senses are important to me. You sort of keep them alive no matter what your age. No matter what role you take on in your life, they're part of it.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever wondered whether it would be possible for you to spend your life with another woman?

[A] Kidman: It would be far easier to go, "Oh, I wish I loved women," but I don't. I mean, I love them, but physically, chemically, they just don't do it for me. I love the way a man thinks. I love the way a man smells. I love the way men look. That's what I like and what I'm drawn to. And I'm hooked on the male physique—hooked on it.

[Q] Playboy: What's the first thing you notice about a man?

[A] Kidman: His mind, and then I love hands. It's about the way he touches you, the way he holds you, what he does with them. I love the male psyche as well. There's a black-and-white to it, a sort of simplicity I like. I have such an enormous number of male friends that everyone thinks I have brothers. It's not threatening, and I can ask men questions and get a lot of answers. I actually know quite a bit about men. I don't judge their decisions or urges.

[Q] Playboy: Are women nicer in general, or are they catty?

[A] Kidman: When I was younger it was more like, "Oh, look, she's married to Tom Cruise," but now it's almost the opposite. Not just in the business but in the world, the strongest support I get is from women who see me and go, "I know you're alone and trying to raise two children; I'm in the same boat" or "I went through this terrible divorce, and I'm raising kids." In different places, different cities, different everything, there's a common denominator if you're lonely at night, you have a child yelling at you, you're dealing with it alone and you're emotionally responsible for yourself and two other people.

[Q] Playboy: Marrying and divorcing a major movie star aren't common experiences for most people, though.

[A] Kidman: I never have nor ever will talk about anything to do with my breakup or about Thomas in any way. It was devastating when it ended, and I choose my words carefully now. When you marry somebody, you promise for the rest of your life to protect them. Even if you end up not together, you're still, in some ways, partnering them, still being able to say, "What we had together was what we had. Nobody else is ever going to share it, and I will never betray you in terms of talking about it." For me it's a way of saying there was so much authenticity to it, so much love there, and it was so important.

[Q] Playboy: So by not discussing the relationship publicly you're showing respect.

[A] Kidman: Huge, huge respect—and protection of what I considered a beautiful thing. There were bad things, but I choose to remember far more the lovely things of falling in love and all that. I don't want anything else, for my spirit or, I suppose, for my essence, because I don't want to be caught up in any of the anger or the bad things.

[Q] Playboy: Your mother, a strong feminist, is a nursing instructor. Your biochemist-psychologist father has written, among other books, Family Life. What was your family life like?

[A] Kidman: My father became a psychologist later, but he was a biochemist for most of my childhood. Catholicism plays a huge part in our family. My sister went to a convent school and was married there. There were times when my home life was really conflicted, times when it was soothing and comforting because of sickness. It was a stimulating environment with a number of eccentric characters, which my family would be offended if I ever went into detail about. But between aunts, uncles, grandparents and a large extended family, there was a lot of eccentricity, which I'm still drawn to. My father is incredibly eccentric.

[Q] Playboy: How is he eccentric?

[A] Kidman: He's the only man in a tap dancing class, and he runs marathons [laughs]. My mother is very bright and opinionated. With both of them being academics, we had an enormous amount of conversation and debate. My sister, Antonia, and I grew up in a conservative upper-middle-class neighborhood in Sydney, and our parents had very liberal politics.

[Q] Playboy: How did having liberal parents in a conservative neighborhood play out?

[A] Kidman: My mother's home was like one big open house to anybody, to "orphans," as she'd call them. She would help anyone in need. We would have a huge mixture of cultures and people, which is a good way to be brought up. And you know, it's always fun to have a slightly more risqué couple in the neighborhood. But they're still very proper in the same way that I would consider myself very proper. My mother has the liberal outlook mixed with an old-fashioned, feminine sort of outlook and a beguiling charm that works on everybody.

[Q] Playboy: With a mother who was an advocate of feminism, have you ever been tempted to burn your bra?

[A] Kidman: I don't wear one very often. That's the benefit of being small-breasted. You can wear one when you want to and not wear one when you don't want to.

[Q] Playboy: If you read a script that described a girl a lot like you as a child, how would that description read?

[A] Kidman: Quiet. Existing very much in her own head and having to be drawn out of that. I used to read so much as a child. My mother brought me up on books and took me to the theater, and my father took me to see opera and dance. From an early age, about seven years old, I wasn't that happy in my skin, so I used to love being in bed at night anticipating where my dreams would take me. I came up with this idea of saying, "Oh well, you spend a third of your life or more in bed, so it can be just as important as what's going on in everyday life."

[Q] Playboy: You preferred fantasy to reality?

[A] Kidman: My imagination far exceeded what I was doing in real life. The most powerful emotion I remember as a child was yearning. Characters in novels were my playmates. I would imagine them with me at times, and I hated when books ended, because you were giving up their life and their world. Most of the Brontë sisters' female characters played a huge part in the molding of me, which probably says something significant [laughs]. I prefer to exist walking around in a slightly dreamlike state a lot of the time. That's what I do when I act. It's almost as if you exist in a slightly altered state, a beautiful state that is quite relaxed. It feels like floating. It's a state of being when you're in a creative place.

[Q] Playboy: Did feeling like an outsider drive you to acting?

[A] Kidman: Being very tall at school, being quieter and slightly unusual, I suppose, is why I went to a theater group when I turned 14. I could get lost in a dark theater because it was safe there. There was another girl at school who wasn't obviously Caucasian, and the kids were so cruel to her. Another friend of mine was the tough girl who would sort of beat up people, hold her stomach tight and say, "Punch me as hard as you can." The two of us took this other girl under our wing, and we became like the Three Stooges. It gave us a feeling of us against them. I still choose people who are slightly more removed and try to take care of them and be around them.

[Q] Playboy: Did you get in trouble? Did you steal anything?

[A] Kidman: I stole a Malibu Barbie doll. Everyone else had one, and I wanted one desperately, but my feminist mother wouldn't let me. She made me take it back, then went to the other extreme: After she realized she couldn't impose her ideas on a small child, she went out and bought me 10 Barbies. I was glad she made me take the doll back, but I was already humiliated, because I have this shocking conscience that weighs on me so heavily. I don't know if that's Catholicism at work or if I was just born that way. When I do something bad, my conscience is so strong that it far outweighs everything else. I always have to confess.

[Q] Playboy: To a priest, you mean?

[A] Kidman: Well, I do go to confession sometimes. I'm always told, "You're allowed to have secrets, Nicole," and you are, of course. At the same time, I don't like to do something I'll be ashamed of, that I would lie on my deathbed and feel weighing heavily on me.

[Q] Playboy: Well, to confess is to be forgiven, even for snatching a Barbie.

[A] Kidman: Confession is a great thing for a Catholic schoolgirl, because you can confess, "I kissed a boy" or "I smoked a cigarette," and somehow you'll be forgiven. Someone asked me the other day if I know myself, and I said, "I don't think I do, but I know what's good for me, what makes me feel good, and I'm not willing to compromise anymore." I have a good sense of what's right and wrong.

[Q] Playboy: How did your parents react when you dropped out of school at the age of 16?

[A] Kidman: Terribly. And it's still, "When are you going to get your degree?" I will get my degree in philosophy, if I get it. When I left school, part of the negotiation was that I would continue my education. That's why I still study French and Italian. When we were in England five years ago I was studying Wordsworth's poetry. At the moment I'm studying the Old Testament through a professor who teaches at Pepperdine University. Through that I'm able to study Israel, Palestine and the Middle East. The reason I want to do this, obviously, is that I'm fascinated by what's happening in the Middle East and the politics of it. I do it to relax on weekends and one night a week.

[Q] Playboy: Were you rebellious as a kid?

[A] Kidman: My mind is rebellious. I got good grades and managed to walk the line and fit in, in terms of the teachers, but I also did all the normal things, like smoking and getting picked up on a motorbike after school. I used to love that I had a boyfriend who had a motorbike. I would get on the back of his Ducati in my school uniform and feel too cool for school. I still love Ducatis. I love Italy. I love Italians [laughs]. So I walked the line, but I could still be invited to the wild parties and stuff.

[Q] Playboy: How wild?

[A] Kidman: Pretty wild, but I won't go into them in depth. I've always been one of those people who want to see and experience things. I think what I did was a good thing, because by the time you're 18 you've seen a lot of things. I don't know why, but I saw a lot and was surrounded by a lot. I got on a plane to Amsterdam when I was 17.

[Q] Playboy: You weren't by yourself. You got on that plane with a guy and lived with him. What was that about?

[A] Kidman: Love. No, actually, I got off the plane in Amsterdam and said to him, "Let's be friends." We traveled around Europe as friends. He slept on the floor, and I slept in the bed.

[Q] Playboy: He put up with this?

[A] Kidman: Well, there was always the possibility of something happening, which is quite erotic [laughs]. But it ended with my saying, "Let's not." I knew I wasn't in love with him and didn't want to marry him. This is terrible, but I bought my wedding dress—a beautiful dress from the 1920s—in a flea market while he and I were in Amsterdam, and it wasn't so that I could marry him. It was bought with the possibility that I would meet the person I was going to marry sometime soon. I did meet my future husband four years later, and that was the dress I wore when we got married. By the way, you're not meant to do that. It's bad luck. I'll never do that again.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you also once tell a guy you might be willing to get engaged and consider marriage but that you didn't want to live with him?

[A] Kidman: Yeah. I don't think there's much wrong with that, is there? He wasn't crazy about the idea. I think there's something quite nice about that, because you're choosing to come together when you choose to come together. At the same time, it's lovely when you're just so enmeshed in each other's lives, like what's yours is mine and what's mine is yours. I can always see different ways in which you can have great relationships. I don't think you have to conform to one ideal. That's probably because I hate routine. I don't even like sit-down meals. My mom says I graze, because I don't like the feeling of "Now you have to sit down and do this. Now you have to be here at this particular time." On the other hand, I get panicked if I'm late, because I think it's disrespectful.

[Q] Playboy: You don't seem like someone who gets panicked by much, but are you really terrified of butterflies?

[A] Kidman: A little. And moths are included in the category. Sometimes when I would come home from school the biggest butterfly or moth you'd ever seen would be just sitting on our front gate. It was terrifying. I would climb over the fence, crawl around the side of the house—anything to avoid having to go through the front gate.

[Q] Playboy: Having a psychologist for a father didn't help?

[A] Kidman: It's a tricky situation, because you don't want your father to be your therapist; you just want a father. Luckily, I do have a great father, which is a lovely thing for a girl to be able to say. I have tried to get over it. I walked into the big butterfly cage at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and had the butterflies on me, but that didn't work. I jump out of planes, I could be covered in cockroaches, I do all sorts of things, but I just don't like the feel of butterflies' bodies. I'm not crazy about caterpillars, either, but I love snakes. I danced with a snake on New Year's Eve 1999.

[Q] Playboy: Details, please.

[A] Kidman:[Laughs] I will not go into any more details—just that I was in Thailand, and a woman was dancing with a huge snake. I asked if I could have it, then I proceeded to wrap it around my body. I loved it. My brother-in-law was like, "Be careful. There'll be photos."

[Q] Playboy: You'd slaughter the competition on Fear Factor.

[A] Kidman: I can do it with pain as well. As long as you breathe, you can go into a state where you actually say, "It's just pain," and it's quite unusual how much you can sustain. I broke two ribs all the way through once and thought I'd only pulled a muscle. I didn't even get it checked, and I was carrying around my baby on my hip like it was nothing. Of course, it's a bad thing to have high pain tolerance, because it means you can do damage to yourself. When I hurt my knee doing Moulin Rouge I danced on it and didn't care. I probably have a high tolerance of pain both emotionally and physically.

[Q] Playboy: Do you seek out pain?

[A] Kidman: I'm not a masochist. But if pain comes, I can tolerate it somehow.

[Q] Playboy: How is your relationship with your mom?

[A] Kidman: I gave my mother my Oscar because without her I wouldn't have an Oscar. It really is a result of her saying, "Educate yourself. Think about things. Stand up for what you believe in. Be anything you want to be." She is a woman who won't walk away from a conversation or give in on what she believes just to please others.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't your mother once say to you that she regretted having kids?

[A] Kidman: Yeah, my child was 10 months old, and I stormed out of the house with her in the stroller, saying to my mother, "How could you say that?" before she was able to finish the sentence. Now I understand what she meant. She would have been a magnificent doctor and been able to give generously to the whole world. She could have gone on to greatness and didn't. She raised us.

[Q] Playboy: Did doing The Blue Room and working with Stanley Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut help your work get bolder and more confident?

[A] Kidman: My work and my responsibility to my work became important to me, and that came from Stanley. He'd say, "Don't be embarrassed to care so much about it. Don't be protective of it. Be unwavering and uncompromising. Be willing to make huge mistakes, but make them because they're on your back."

[Q] Playboy: He died just days before he completed the movie. How did that affect you?

[A] Kidman: He was the first person I had been very close to in my life to suddenly die. He was right there one day and gone the next. I remember the Sunday morning I got the phone call. Thomas was in Australia, and I had the kids in New York and was making croissants. I was going to return a call from Stanley on Saturday night and thought, I'm so tired—I'll call him in the morning or he'll call me. Because we still spoke maybe three times a week after the movie was finished. Then I got this phone call from his assistant, who said, "Stanley is dead." I remember screaming and dropping the phone, and the kids were sort of looking, like, "What is going on?" I did everything you shouldn't do, but the news was so shocking to me, and the reaction was so immediate that I couldn't stop it.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds as though he was a life changer.

[A] Kidman: He was mischievous, extraordinary and brilliant, and I loved being around him. He challenged me and basically shook up everything, all my foundations. We talked so much on the phone because he hated to drive into London. And yet he did drive into London with his wife, Christiane, to see The Blue Room, and he got photographed, which was just the worst for him. I think that was one of the last public photographs of him, and I have it now.

[Q] Playboy: You know a lot about being photographed at premieres and pretty much everywhere else. How are you handling it these days?

[A] Kidman: I have said before that the only person I will ever show up on the red carpet with again is my husband. I will never bring somebody for any reason other than I want by my side the person I've now chosen to be with forever. I go to awards shows but never to premieres other than my own. It's a completely unnatural environment, and you feel overwhelmed and slightly unstable. I can really stay only a few minutes, and then I have to leave. You get mobbed. You get flashbulbs. You get people coming at you. And that's when I get panicked.

[Q] Playboy: Is this a new reaction?

[A] Kidman: It didn't happen before, because I wasn't the center of it. I also had somebody then whose hand I could hold, an arm I could clutch, someone who would say, "Nic, sit down, you're looking dazed" or who would pull me together—who was basically my protection. It's strange the way everything has shifted in the past four or five years, since Moulin Rouge came out. I still kind of reel from it.

[Q] Playboy: You're so famous now that scrutiny is hard to avoid. Not long ago a medical exam you'd undergone caused international speculation.

[A] Kidman: I'd had a mammogram, which seems so terrible to have to discuss, and someone had stolen my medical records. They thought there was something wrong in my mammogram, and I had to have it checked in a hospital. When they write about it everywhere, that's when you just say, "This is so intrusive," but I thought I'd make a statement about it, one, because it's important for women to get regular mammograms, and two, to say, "These people should back off, because I find this absolutely appalling." Taking photos of people kissing at Red Sox games or coming out of restaurants or even out of their house is fair game. But not in matters of life and death or when children are involved.

[Q] Playboy: In 1995 you won great reviews for playing a manipulative, fame-obsessed mantrap in To Die For. Do you ever wonder whether people thought you were playing yourself?

[A] Kidman: It's quite dangerous to do that early in your career, because you get labeled: "Well, that's what she must really be." It's different when you have a body of work and they see the different characters you play. So much of what I do now in films is driven by the themes of love and loss. I look back at those choices now and go, "Oh...," and that's why I want to play Ulla in The Producers. You know, "Get out of this for a little while. Sing and dance again, Nicole."

[Q] Playboy: Ulla is a sexy bombshell comedic role, but it's true that in the past few years—in The Hours, Dogville, Moulin Rouge, Cold Mountain—you've played women who make extreme sacrifices for love.

[A] Kidman: When you grow up reading and loving Wuthering Heights, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, I'm sure you absorb some of that, and I'm absolutely sure that the beauty of those characters made me want to be an actor. A lot of times as a woman you are willing to give up so much of who you are, almost in a sacrificial way, to make somebody else happy. It's almost part of our nature, the way we're raised—or the way certain women are raised.

[Q] Playboy: Do you agree with psychologists who say we wind up pursuing partners who remind us of our parents?

[A] Kidman: That gives me enormous belief in men, because I've seen my father, a kind, wonderful man, be happily married and stay married. It's a gift to be able to see two people, 40 years later, still holding hands and talking on the phone when they're apart for more than two days. He's got a good woman, so it's not a huge struggle, but I think marriage is a huge struggle. Monogamy is a huge struggle. He has never once betrayed her, and she has never once betrayed him. You always knew as a child that their love for each other was more than their love for you, which is a wonderful thing to see, because as a child you have to then know that and respect it. As a result, my sister and I are so intertwined. She's like my other half. If something ever happened to her, I wouldn't be able to live.

[Q] Playboy: What about your taste in men?

[A] Kidman: I remember having crushes when I was 10, 11 and 12 on much older men. Then when I first fell in love, it was so powerful and intoxicating that it's almost left me fearful now because the feeling was so heady, and ultimately it didn't work out. But I remember that being one of the most extraordinary times in my life. And I don't think I've ever been in love that way since.

[Q] Playboy: You're talking about a guy you married, right?

[A] Kidman: Yeah. I almost feel there are times in life when you're ready for it. And I feel myself ready for it again.

[Q] Playboy: How do you balance meeting someone new with having children?

[A] Kidman: No man meets my children unless he's going to be my husband. If he is going to be my husband, then he'll take on a big role in their life. But until that point, no one gets to penetrate our little circle. That may be old-fashioned, but it's also the way in which I can cope. I haven't really had a relationship, because I didn't want the children to be in competition with it. That's probably wrong, but at the same time that's what I feel I needed to give them.

[Q] Playboy: Doesn't your career, travel schedule and life with your kids almost guarantee that you'll get involved with someone in show business?

[A] Kidman: Please, no. A fascinating person, a tolerant person, someone who is looking for something slightly different. Maybe I'm meant to be alone. I really hope not, because I love to be around people. I love to be part of somebody—to be with somebody.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about "location relationships," the phenomenon of people thinking that, when they make a movie, anyone is fair game for an affair, even someone who is married, and whatever happens on a movie set doesn't matter.

[A] Kidman: It absolutely matters, because it blackens your soul. It matters because you will then have to lie. That's why you have to be careful what you promise and to whom, so you can keep the promises. You have to be so careful not to be flippant—not just with what you promise but also with other people's hearts. I hate the way people play games. I don't like mental games. I like things up front.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever met someone at work, at a party, on a commuter train, and thought, If only...?

[A] Kidman: Not often, but maybe three times in a lifetime you're going to meet somebody who makes you go, "Oh, this is who I've been waiting for. I could have had a life with this person. If only I'd met them when I was...," whatever. But now I've accumulated all these barriers and reasons that don't allow it to be—you're married, you've got kids. There are ways in which all those things can exist in a pure way without harming anything, because you don't act on it at all. There's a big difference between thinking about something and doing it. But I think we're (concluded on page 132)Nicole Kidman(continued from page 58) all liars if we pretend it never happens.

[Q] Playboy: In your new movie with Sean Penn, The Interpreter, your character works at the United Nations and overhears an assassination plot, and then the suspense begins. That sounds like a Hitchcock movie premise.

[A] Kidman:[Laughs] Hopefully. I would have loved to work with Hitchcock. Oh, I so wish I had. I think—I hope—this is an unusual film. I wanted to play a woman who speaks many languages, and I play a South African interpreter. I loved shooting at the UN. I got to work with Sean and Sydney Pollack, the director.

[Q] Playboy: One thing about Hitchcock's great thrillers is the chemistry between his stars.

[A] Kidman: Well, hopefully Sean and I have chemistry. I know we've wanted to work together for a long time. It felt like coming home, it really did. It felt like this was somebody I'm meant to be around. Sean and I had met many times before, and this really felt like something that was meant to be.

[Q] Playboy: Did you find him sexy?

[A] Kidman: Of course! I mean, he is. But he's also just so decent and compassionate. That's what I think I responded to the most. I suppose the word protection comes up a lot in my conversation, but he was protective and respectful of me. I love to be around that. But I think it's Sean's nature to stand up and protect people. He'll fight for what he believes in. He's the kind of person you feel would throw himself in front of a bullet for you. It was beautiful, because I got to give him an Academy Award and then got to work with him.

[Q] Playboy: After The Interpreter and then Bewitched and The Producers, what's next?

[A] Kidman: I've ridden horses my whole life and feel most at home when I'm outside in the Australian bush, so I'm going back to make a film with Russell Crowe from the novel Eucalyptus, about a woman, a suitor, the woman's father and the eucalyptus trees themselves, which are truly Australian. I go hiking sometimes up in the canyons in L.A., and just the smell of the eucalyptus transports me to Australia. I see them as our gift to America.

[Q] Playboy: You've won an Oscar, and you're a major force in Hollywood. Do you finally feel you've arrived?

[A] Kidman: For now I'm getting offered the good roles. Really, it's all about accumulating a lifetime of experience and being able to give back generously to people. I hope that's what I'll be like. The most powerful emotion I remember as a child was yearning, and I still think that being on the precipice, longing for and wanting something without knowing whether you're ever going to get it, is a beautiful and creative place to be.

Maybe I'm meant to be alone. I hope not, because I love to be part of somebody—to be with somebody.

I have this shocking conscience that weighs on me so heavily. I don't know if that's Catholicism at work or if I was born that way. I always have to confess.

When I first fell in love, it was so powerful that it's almost left me fearful, because ultimately it didn't work out. I don't think I've been in love that way since.