Tuesday Top Twenty: Ranking Nicole Kidman's Work
Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at 7:01PM By Nathaniel R
Nicole at the ACM Awards this weekAs mentioned in our piece on the finale of Big Little Lies the internet is finally accepting that Nicole Kidman is a genius. Why they haven't noticed that she's been a regularly gripping actor since Dead Calm (1989) with her ascent into intermittent genius happening as early as 1995 (twenty-two years ago!) with her sly breakthrough as fame-obsessed Suzanne Stone in Gus Van Sant's To Die For (Golden Globe win, Best Actress in a Comedy) we will never understand.
But it is what it is. Actresses not named Meryl Streep have to go through this from time to time with people doubting their talent. One imagines if Michelle Pfeiffer is brilliant in any of her comeback roles this year we will get a raft of "who knew this 80s sex symbol, Catwoman herself, was also a great actor?!" articles and we will have to roll our eyes with a "anyone who was paying any attention at all!" answer and a weary shrug.
But it's fun to do quick rankings, so herewith...
Nicole Kidman's 20 Best Performances
The order would vary if the list were composed on a different day though the top eight would remain the top eight, give or take the exact numbers...
- Moulin Rouge! (Oscar & SAG nomination, Golden Globe win)
- The Paperboy (Globe & SAG nomination)
- Birth (Globe nomination)
- Rabbit Hole (Oscar, Globe & SAG nominations)
- Big Little Lies (TV)
🔺 masterpiece star turns, really
- To Die For (Globe win, BAFTA nomination)
- The Others (Globe & BAFTA nominations)
- The Hours (Oscar, Globe & BAFTA wins, SAG nomination)
🔺 she earned those awards!
- Dogville
- Lion (Oscar, Globe, BAFTA, nominations)
- Photograph 51 (Stage)
🔺 terrific work
- Margot at the Wedding
- Flirting
- Eyes Wide Shut
- Dead Calm
- The Golden Compass
🔺 underappreciated choices but maybe not her "best"
- Paddington
- Birthday Girl
- Nine
- Australia
🔺 imperfect but she has her moments in these
Performances I'd need to revisit before feeling comfortable in ranking them (memory is so foggy on these four 90s films ---wait, have I even seen them all the way through?)
- Billy Bathgate (Globe nomination)
- Batman Forever
- Portrait of a Lady
- Practical Magic
Coming soon to (hopefully) disrupt the list above
- How to Talk to Girls at Parties
- Top of the Lake (season 2)
- The Beguiled
- The Killing of a Sacred Deer
A NOTE ON FILM CRITICS AND NICOLE: Despite many acclaimed roles she has never won any of the holy trinity of critics prizes (NYFCC, LAFCA, or NSFC) nor has she ever won a solo prize from one of the A list film festivals, though she shared Best Actress at Berlinale with her co-stars in The Hours.
Like any actor who works nonstop (she has over 70 credits already) there are missteps. I think these are the biggest disappointments given that the roles themselves are actually interesting:
- Stoker
- Cold Mountain (Globe nomination)
- Fur
- Genius
Performances I haven't seen
- Any of her Australian TV or film work before Dead Calm (1989)
- The Blue Room (stage)
- My Life (1993)
- Malice (1993)
- The Peacemaker (1997)
- The Interpreter (2005)
- Trespass (2011)
- Just Go With It (2011)
- Hemingway & Gelhorn (2012, Globe, Emmy & SAG nomination)
- Before I Go to Sleep (2014)
- Grace of Monaco (2014, SAG nomination)
- Secret in Their Eyes (2015)
- Queen of the Desert (2015)
HOW WOULD YOU RANK NICOLE KIDMAN'S PERFORMANCES?
Reader Comments (82)
Am I the only one who likes Nicole but gets tired of the OTT worship she gets?
Moulin Rouge! is my #1 favorite performance of hers and I don't see that ever changing! I just adore her in that movie so much. I think it's when I officially fell in love with her as an actress. I really wish she won the Oscar for it instead of The Hours, which I do not consider a top 10 performance of hers or one of her best either. Life would be perfect if Nicole won for Moulin Rouge! and Julianne rightfully won for Far From Heaven.
You haven't seen Grace of Monaco? lol. I'm hoping this is a real great year for her. I'm so looking forward to The Beguiled.
My top 5 is very similar...
Moulin Rouge!: I'm probably biased because it's my favorite movie of all time but I can't picture anyone else nailing those roles like Nicole and Ewan. You can see why those characters couldn't help and fall in love with the other.
The Paperboy: Sooooooooo underrated. I've said this before but she had so much working against her in that role. The (hot) trashy look, the dialogue, pee/telepathy sex/washing machine and it would have been easy to fall into caricature but somehow she made Charlotte into a real layered character.
Birth: Opera scene. No explanation needed.
Dogville: When her character took a turn.
Rabbit Hole or To Die For for the last spot. Not sure which one.
Honorable mention to The Golden Compass because that was flawless casting and for her introductory scene in the gold dress and the polite terror at the dinner table, Stoker for her monologue and Nine for Unusual Way which would have been amazing without all the cuts to dialogue. Worked for Take It All to increase the intensity but worked against Unusual Way.
I was meh on her in Big Little Lies for the first half or so because she was doing good work but nothing spectacular but then she got more room and turned it out. The finale should be her Emmy submission without question.
Also if you haven't seen it already:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/female-actress-good?utm_term=.oaVYLPb2mO#.xczw8pvexa
I just realized, Nicole won for The Hours mainly because of the baitiness of her role (tragic figure, ~the nose!~) and because she was considered due. And Julianne won for Still Alice for the same reasons + weak competition. How ironic.
She's fine in The Hours until the I'M DYING IN THIS TOWN!!! scene. Inconsistent performance overall. I'd have loved to seen her win in 2010 over Natalie Portman. Rabbit Hole is very underrated while Black Swan is extremely overrated.
"(...)nor has she ever won a solo prize from one of the A list film festivals, though she shared Best Actress at Berlinale with her co-stars in The Hours."
And, God, she deserved so much the Palm d'or for Dogville and the Volp Cup of Venice for The Others.
NK is amazing. That's it.
I love that this site worships and appreciates actresses. Because I think people are honestly so weird about them - they are mostly seen as models (no shade to models because they work hard too) or forced to represent outdated symbols of womanhood in society which is too high a burden to place on them. They constantly have to prove themselves in a way that men aren't asked to.
I've been revisiting her performances lately and she is just phenomenal. My favorites are Portrait of a Lady, the Hours, Birth and Dogville but she is always captivating. 2003-2010 was a rough time for fans of her but even then she was doing interesting work. I could not believe people on social media were calling BLL a revelation and stating that they didn't think she could produce a performance of this standard when she has always been great. Which men of her age group, which includes Downey Jr., Daniel Craig, Will Smith and McConaughey, have produced a fiImography and a range of performances in the way that she has. However, I guarantee they will nearly have more defenders than she does in the general public.
Also, I hate hate hate to compare women but it's so weird to me that Blanchett is nearing deification status and Kidman is always being reassesed. I think they are on the same level.
My comments under today's Big Little Lies still goes
Am I the only one who likes Nicole but gets tired of the OTT worship she gets?
She's a real Meryl Streep...you know with an inflated nomination count of four...the industry just can't get enough of her...calm down if you're not an actual fan. Avoid topics with her in them. You're not force to endure attention after attention as a Streep agnostic as I do get real get over...Kidman deserve more than your favs...forever and always.
Stop treating (Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus) like an artistic misstep when it's exactly the kind of vehicle she thrives in and gets people to open themselves to.
My favorites are probably Moulin Rouge (NK + EM), The Hours (the whole great cast), To Die For, Rabbit Hole, Dogville, The Others, and Big Little Lies. Every film actor who works over several decades has misfires on their resume, but Nicole has done great work and the better films or TV projects are what ultimately becomes remembered. The acting "masters" of the later 20th and early 21st Century are probably (?) DeNiro, Pacino, Nicholson, Streep, Kidman, Blanchett, Day-Lewis, and maybe a few others that I can't remember at the moment. But you are right, sometimes an actor has to slam dunk later in his or her career to get noticed again.
I actually thought Stoker was a fascinating, hilarious and thrilling performance. The character was not particularly well written but I love what Nicole did with it.
You haven't seen Malice?!
Ultra enjoyable Gulity Pleasure movie - and Nicole Kidman is icy brilliant as the femme fatale!
And Alec Baldwin's is terrific in it too.
I agree with 3rtful - Fur is not an artistic misstep by any means - she actually gives one of her most interesting performances in it.
And the movie is flawed but fascinating.
She's awful in Stoker - but the movie's a masterpiece despite her performance.
I can't believe you haven't seen The Interpreter - one of her very best performances - the movie itself is nothing special, but she's REALLY good in it.
And you haven't seen The Peacemaker either?
She makes a pretty good action heroine actually!
You're lucky you haven't seen
Before I Go to Sleep (2014)
Grace of Monaco (2014, SAG nomination)
Queen of the Desert (2015)
Trespass (2011)
She's awful, and so are the movies.
She's quite fun in Just Go With It.
Oh I so disagree with this list
Ha! Thank you for the shout-out to The Golden compass. When I read that book, all I could think of was her in the role! Fun fact - the author wrote her a personal letter to beg her to take part in it as she didn't want to play the villain!
I knew you loved her work in paddington, I did! She's having fun - something we don't say often enough.
And thank you to the commenter who mentioned Just Go with It - I have never watched an Adam Sandler movie in my life but I did watch that one for her. The hula dancing scene is hysterical - she's got comic chops in there too.
(How have you not seen Grace of Monaco)!
And I actually love her in Stoker, 'personal speaking, I can't wait to watch life tear you apart' is a favourite line of mine...
So much work, so much good, but quite a bit of dreck in there too but at least she's bold, different and works regularly.
I'm so excited for The Killing Of A Sacred Deer - Lanthimos is a genius.
I'm worried about The Beguiled;
the trailer does not bode well for the movie,
nor for her performance.
Birth should be #1.
Kidman's never been awful in anything. One of the things that's gotten her through fallow periods and bad movies, is that she's usually the best thing in said bad movie. To the point where she gives award worthy performances in highly questionable fims (like The Paperboy)
Kidman is legit one of the greatest actors of all time (I'm using the gender neutral term, because I'm including men in this as well). The fact that the public, and even many critics who should know better have been reluctant to treat her as such, says a lot about how actresses are judged.
For a start, no actress who embraces her beauty and or/sex appeal as part of her arsenal (which Kidman does) is seemly allowed to be accorded true "actors actor" status. Unless they are French (Cotillard, Deneuve etc), and work mostly in subtitled European arthouse movies. Streep of course, has mostly been regarded as if not quite asexual, just never particularly sexy, for most of her career.
Kidman's peers/contemporaries (mainly the Kates, Blanchett and Winslet), whom critics and much of the public are much more comfortable embracing as "great actresses", are nice looking women, but again, never really cornered a market in sex appeal. Or never regarded as great beauties like Kidman.
This is why only Kidman could play Satine in Moulin Rouge, whilst (a younger) Streep, Winslet or Blanchett could attempt it, but not make it work. That role needed a star that embraced her beauty, sex appeal and iconic stardom when needed in a way so many "great" actresses can't or won't. Yet Kidman can go toe to toe with these other actresses playing the dowdy character roles (Virgina Woolf, Frizzy haired momma in Lion) that sexy, beautiful actresses aren't supposed to be nailing.
And that's the great contradiction of Kidman, and possibly why so many don't get her. How can a woman who so heavily embraces her iconic status, beauty and sex appeal, also be one of the most supremely talented character actors of our time? It doesn't compute. Someone like Kidman isn't supposed to be that good or that insanely talented. Which leads to dismissal instead of acceptance.
The internet commotion over her Big Little Lies performance is great, but Anne Helen Petersen is right. Kidman gives masterful performances pretty regularly, but if she ends up in a mediocre film or two, her "greatness" goes right back to being questioned. It's genuinely insane and maddening.
As I said, many critics (though she has her champions in that sphere) have been complicit in this bullshit, which is why as pointed about, Kidman, the greatest actress of her generation, has never won one of the trifecta of major critics awards.
It's obvious Kidman's talent and stature will be much more appreciated going forward, in part because she's getting older. But she should have been accorded consistent Streep-level reverence since To Die For ( though she was great in Dead Calm and Malice), not just intermittent acknowledgement that she could act when in good movie or role.
I did a top ten on Twitter, but will expand...
1. Birth
2. Big Little Lies
3. To Die For
4. The Paperboy
5. Rabbit Hole
6. Moulin Rouge!
7. The Others
8. Dogville
9. The Hours
10. Eyes Wide Shut
11. Flirting
12. Margot at the Wedding
13. Lion
14. The Portrait of a Lady
15. The Family Fang
16. Dead Calm
17. Stoker
18. Emerald City
19. Paddington
20. Before I Go to Sleep
I wish I could say I remember enough of VIETNAM and BANGKOK HILTON, but the memories are fuzzy from early TV viewings where I don't remember if I ever saw every episode of those miniseries.
Nathaniel, super fun article! Thanks for compiling.
Nicole is one of the greatest actors to ever be in front of a camera. It has been annoying to see everyone light up to her in Big Little Lies, but that's nothing we can be too mad about. As you mention, it's eye-rollable. Time will be incredibly kind to Nicole, especially due to all her work with major directors.
Personally I think Dogville is one of her absolute best, as are Margot at the Wedding and Eyes Wide Shut. And Moulin Rouge isn't my fave of hers (maybe tenth for me). But she's almost always doing something interesting, and I love how she is always in service to the director and the story and the character. She's the balls.
All of you need to watch BMX Bandits, it is a hoot. A HOOT
@Abel
"Also, I hate hate hate to compare women but it's so weird to me that Blanchett is nearing deification status and Kidman is always being reassesed. I think they are on the same level."
Of course Kidman and Blanchett are on the same level. I give the edge to Kidman. Blanchett is more technically on point and a stronger mimic, but Kidman seems to have a lot more layers to her characterisations and internalises better, as a general rule of thumb. I've come to appreciate Blanchett's greatness over the years though. It's oddly remarkable that a country as small as Australia ended up producing two of the all-time female greats in the same generation (also makes you feel bad for the likes of Naomi Watts and Toni Collete....great Aussie actresses of the same vintage, who will forever be in the shadow of the Blanchett/Kidman axis).
As I said earlier, Blanchett (though great and deserving of a high stature) is a safer choice to deify than Kidman, because even though fashion magazines and the gay community adore Blanchett, she's never had that straight male gaze fascination and sex symbol status that complicates assesment of Kidman's worth.
I couldn't abide her much until To Die For, that first marriage really did her no favors.
Top 10: To Die For, Dogville, The Others, Big Little Lies, The Paperboy, Moulin Rouge, The Portrait of a Lady, Birthday Girl, Margot at the Wedding, Lion.
(Obviously, I haven't seen Birth.)
I've been wanting to rewatch Portrait of a Lady for so long, not just for Nic, but every last member of that crazy cast. One day...
My favorites are Birth and To Die For.
How is it possible to be a Kidman fan and not see Malice? It's nowhere near her best performance but it's the first role that she flat-out devoured. There are glimmers of To Die For and The Paperboy in this wonderful gem of a film, not to mention some great Aaron Sorkin dialogue and Anne FUCKING Bancroft. Get thee to Netflix (or your local library's DVD section)!
I agree with the disappointment over her role in Stoker. The best line reading is in the trailer. Not a bad film, on the whole, but I was expecting Nicole to do a lot more scenery chewing than she did. Underwritten character, I think.
My personal top 5 looks something like this:
1. Birth
2. The Paperboy
3. To Die For
4. The Others
5. Rabbit Hole
Rabbit Hole and To Die For followed by The Hours.
LOL at the OTT. Sentiments here.
I'll defend her Oscar win always and forever.
She's a terrific Virginia Wolf in a terrific film about women, mental illness, and isolation.
She's a great actress. One of the best, really.
Practically a Cate Blanchett who acts in too many turkeys.
Needs to be more selective and careful.
The train scene and the previous lost to Berry for historic reasons is why they shotgunned her the Oscar when they did. And since they have problems nominating her for worthy work after I feel like it was the absolute right call they acted when they did. Think of Tilda Swinton without subsequent nominations after her first career nod. They knew do or die to make her an Oscar winner.
Someone posted in a previous thread that she never acts above a whisper, but she is straight up shouting in Malice, so...
Birth is her best performance, IMO, but she's so damned great in Big Little Lies, Margot at the Wedding, Moulin Rouge, The Others, The Paperboy, Photograph 51, The Portrait of a Lady, Rabbit Hole, and To Die For that I rank them alphabetically. (Dead Calm, Dogville, Eyes Wide Shut, The Hours, and Lion are honorable mentions for me.)
Face it, she's one of the very best we've EVER had.
Love this list and surprised by so many choices (Paperboy so high, Dogville too low... but a great list). I clearly need to see more - and I thought you were at that AFI Queen of the Desert screening somewhere! haha.
Big Little Lies is certainly among her best work, and the Lion nomination was so well deserved. Here's hoping the next projects are just as exciting. And personally, I loved her for her big speech in Stoker.
Any big Kidman fans have thoughts on Hemingway & Gelhorn? Worth checking out?
Birth, To Die For and The Others are Kidman at her very very best. Just astounding. Everything else is at least a tier below.
(have not see the Paperboy or Little Big Lies yet)
Also, on the more negative side, I take offense at you saying she was doing something interesting in Australia. She actually helped drag that film down when usually she elevates. She got the tone all wrong which is unfortunate because her partner (Jackman) was on point. Definitely belongs in the 'Disappointing" category; worse than her performance in Cold Mountain by far (where she did have her moments but was still disappointing when compared to her normal level of quality).
"Practically a Cate Blanchett who acts in too many turkeys."
I would say that Kidman is a bit more inconsistent of a performer than Blanchett, but when they are both on the top of their game, Kidman generally is > Blanchett.
However, they have exceptions and they are both grand.
Why are people hating on The Hours? She's terrific in that!
Why do people feel the need to denigrate other actresses when discussing film actresses? Sexiness is in the eye of the beholder, and originality is appreciated. No one says man X is great but not sexy.
You can't not have watched 1989's "Bangkok Hilton", this will only reinforce how Kidman excels in mini series.
You have to watch it.
That's actually wrong because Nicole won for past work and sympathy over her divorce to TC. No one shotgunned her to victory. Her work in The Hours was worthy. And newsflash but Viola won. It's hard to take your comments seriously.
Her best to me was in Paperboy because I can't think of another actress (Cate, Kate, etc) that
can sizzle that role like she did! And yes, please stop comparing her to Blanchett - they're both
phenomenal in their own way.
That's actually wrong because Nicole won for past work and sympathy over her divorce to TC. No one shotgunned her to victory. Her work in The Hours was worthy. And newsflash but Viola won. It's hard to take your comments seriously.
Shut the fuck up.
/3rtful: why are you always so antagonistic? Your passion is great but your callousness and stubborn attitude makes it hard to care about your opinion. I find I now just scroll through your comments without even reading.
Kidman was the star du jour in 2003, fresh off her Oscars fr The Hours. She was the biggest star n most glamour celebrity of the moment n Dogville entered Cannes w the loudest noise. She cld b giving her best perf but Cannes is never gonna bite, they alws go w the underdogs n luv to give us surprises . Same tink happened w Carol. Blanchett was hotly tipped to win, but we all know wat happened.
Imo, Kidman shld've won for Moulin Rogue! instead o The Hours. Zellweger shld've won for Chicago n Julianne for The Hours (who delivers the besr perf among the 3). And Pat Clarkson shld've won for Pieces o April. Period. No stupid make up Oscars to rob anyone o their more deserving turns.
I could talk about Nicole Kidman all day, every day, come what may.
Also, on the more negative side, I take offense at you saying she was doing something interesting in Australia. She actually helped drag that film down when usually she elevates. She got the tone all wrong which is unfortunate because her partner (Jackman) was on point. Definitely belongs in the 'Disappointing" category; worse than her performance in Cold Mountain by far (where she did have her moments but was still disappointing when compared to her normal level of quality).
Huh - I completely disagree. Australia is, for me, one of the most underrated movies (and her most underrated performance) of the past 10 years and works largely BECAUSE of her performance. The first hour is broad comedy, the final hour is high melodrama and she pretty seamlessly moves from one to the other throughout. Begins as a zany stereotype and ends as a three dimensional human we root for.
With regards to Stoker - I love the movie though think that she's barely "fine" in it. Not really her fault, the character makes ZERO sense and her attempts to flesh out the person beneath those disconnected lines of dialogue are not enough to craft a rounded person. She can't compete with Jacki Weaver, who is given a one-note caricature and is able to flesh it out in a short space of time. Kidman's character's dialogue contradicts every interpretation at every turn. Doomed from the start.
Apologies - the first paragraph is a quote from Huh, the second two are my opinion (struggling with HTML)
1. Birth
2. The Portrait of a Lady
3. Rabbit Hole
4. Eyes Wide Shut
5. Moulin Rouge!
6. Dogville
should have gotten Oscar-Nominations for this 6 performances
7. To Die For
8. The Paperboy
9. The Hours
10. The Others
Also, you must revisit Practical Magic and especially The Portrait of a Lady if you're planning a big celebration of her 50th birthday. The first is the most free-spirited she has appeared on screen and the second is a unique period piece for its time, considering Merchant Ivory was the one-on-one how-to for that genre in the 90's.
There are so many movies you haven't seen that I feel like removing your Kidmaniac visa.
1. The Hours
2. Moulin Rouge!
3. Big Little Lies
4. To Die For
5. The Others
6. The Paperboy
7. Dogville
8. Eyes Wide Shut
9. Rabbit Hole
10. Lion / Photograph 51
She was great in Birth but the movie itself blows.
I hope you get to see 'Bangkok Hilton' one day Nathaniel. It's really good.
I'll never wrap my head around why people give those thin Moulin Rouge vocals and overly fussy high school farce theatrics a pass - I mean strictly in terms of her performance - I still otherwise love movie. L
And I'm totally with the first commenter who finds Kidman in general wildly overrated on this site. But I do very much like the other performances in the Top 10 above. I revisited To Die for recently, and holy hell she's genius in that. Birth too. I think those are her two best.
But for all the range those two performances so readily demonstrate, I still find she has glaring limitations as an actress. And comparing her to Blanchett - apart from being uncomfortable in the sense of randomly pitting actresses against one another - is just ludicrous.
Portrait of a Lady is soooo underrated!
Moulin Rouge
The Others
To Die For
Big Little Lies
Rabbit Hole
The Paperboy
Portrait of a Lady
The Hours
Birth
Margot at the Wedding
Dogville