How ‘icy’ Nicole Kidman became Hollywood’s most daring sex star

In her new film Babygirl, Nicole Kidman pushes the boat out. At 57, she gets down on all fours, at the request of Harris Dickinson, who plays a young intern in the technology company run by her character. She drinks cream from a saucer during one of their dates.

Sexually dissatisfied with her husband (Antonio Banderas), she watches pornography while the camera holds firmly on her face in close-up, capturing every spasm of pleasure. She also picks up one of Dickinson’s ties, thrown away at a party, and practically eats it.

None of this should come as a surprise, much less a mind-blowing revelation. Kidman has always been one of the most physically fearless female stars in Hollywood. After all, this is the same actress who was dubbed “pure theatrical Viagra” by then-theater critic Charles Spencer when she stripped naked for her British stage debut, The Blue Room by David Hare, at the Donmar warehouse in 1998.

Kidman’s risk-taking in sexually adventurous roles goes well beyond mere nudity, however. The Blue Room was an adaptation by Arthur Schnitzler; much like Eyes Wide Shut (1999), which was sold on the ooh-la-la cachet of inviting viewers into the inner sanctum of the Cruise-Kidman marriage, imagining blatant infidelities and matter-of-factly showing bathroom routines. Alice Harford’s bath.

There are many other Kidman turns that belie any obscure notion that she is an icy or inhibited artist, or carefully “chic” in the manner of Grace Kelly. She is vibrant and loose in Moulin Rouge! (2001); vampish and accomplice in Malice (1993). His career involves frequent risks in this regard, more so than many of his peers.

After all, when was the last time you saw Cate Blanchett get ravaged by a washing machine at a Miami shelter? Name a movie in which Meryl Streep squats in a bikini over Zac Efron, who is lying on a beach, and urinates on him to relieve a severe reaction to a jellyfish sting. Or find a Michelle Williams character who visits her fiancé in prison and brings him to orgasm from across the room, while dressed like a rapacious vixen from a Russ Meyer movie and moaning full throated.

All three of those feats belong to The Paperboy, Kidman’s ferociously sinister 2012 collaboration with writer-director Lee Daniels, alongside a juicy cast of big names that also included Matthew McConaughey, John Cusack, and David Oyelowo. As star-studded as it was, this Florida-set crime drama, based on a 1995 Pete Dexter thriller, made very little noise at the time – in fact, it was a pronounced failure at the box office , grossing only $3.8 million worldwide on a budget of $12.5 million.

The plot is completely crazy. Kidman’s character, Charlotte Bless, is a constantly lecherous Alabama hen who, through pen pal correspondence, falls recklessly in love with a death row inmate named Hillary Van Wetter (Cusack), an alligator hunter living in the swamps, convicted of shooting a local sheriff in Florida.

Charlotte is convinced of Van Wetter’s innocence and enlists the help of an investigative reporter named Ward Jansen (McConaughey) to exonerate him. Ward’s younger brother, Jack (Efron), is enlisted as a driver and quietly becomes infatuated with Charlotte, who rejects him, not wanting to ruin their friendship.

The Paperboy was widely criticized at its world premiere at Cannes 2012. In a typical review, Michael Schulman of The New Yorker called it “delusional and absurd.” Our own Robbie Collin gave it just one star, joking that “in the grand scheme of dog dinners” it was “a ten-course canine tasting menu with wine pairings “.

The film’s blatant disregard for good taste invited these savages. But so was its unveiling in competition at Cannes, which is roughly the equivalent of making fun of Ferrero Rochers at the Ambassador’s Ball, surrounded by luminaries in black tie, while wearing nothing but a bright pink thong. He was guaranteed to be ridiculed and, predictably, he left empty-handed.

Bruised by the critical reaction, Daniels later claimed that it almost made him give up on directing altogether. (He was already set to shoot his 2013 historical drama The Butler – a much more tedious affair – but the long gap between that and Daniels’ next film, 2021’s The People vs Billie Holiday, backs up his claim.)

A one-of-a-kind but wildly erratic filmmaker, Daniels would never have achieved the prestige of a Cannes slot for The Paperboy if it hadn’t been for Precious (2009), a major hit that garnered six Academy Award nominations , winning for the screenplay and Mo’Nique’s performance.

What Precious’s praise on paper doesn’t tell you is that, as the main Oscar bait goes, it’s one of the classiest plays in Academy history. : she is harsh, confrontational, obviously melodramatic and borders on camp. In The Paperboy, with Kidman’s help, Daniels took us beyond the limits.

No one could really take it seriously until they realized they weren’t supposed to. When the film returned for its commercial release, audiences stayed away. Critics, however, began to admit that the film’s trashy tension was entertaining, that the problematic elements were at least worth discussing, and that there was something knowingly ridiculous about it from top to bottom. One of them was Robbie: giving up that star, he overhauled it extensively with four, calling it “an intoxicating mirage of sex, swamp and soul music that wants nothing more than for you to share the joke. Thank goodness I finally got it.

In The Paperboy itself, the person who seems most in on this joke and who engages most forcefully in all of its punchlines – from raging sex to emergency urination – is undoubtedly Kidman. It was admitted, at first in hushed tones, that she was incredible in the film; that speech gained momentum, and by December she was within a whisker of being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. (The Golden Globes and SAG Awards both found a place for her, but she was pushed aside by a surprise Oscar nod for Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings Playbook.)

Perhaps contemplating the film’s most discussed scene — the special urinating with Efron on the beach — turned off voters. But it’s definitely one of the highlights of Kidman’s performance, and not just because of an instantly memorable line: “If anyone’s going to piss on him, it’s going to be me!” »

Kidman owns the scene long before the jellyfish sting, as she firmly, almost motherly, keeps Efron’s character in the friend zone: “I’m not going to ruin a friendship over a stupid little blowjob,” says- She.

Kidman’s fearlessness and imperturbability in this role are all the more impressive given that it wasn’t meant to be his. Sofia Vergara was originally cast as Charlotte, but dropped out, due to what was cited as a scheduling conflict with Modern Family, in early 2011. She wasn’t the only one: Cusack’s role had initially been proposed to Tobey Maguire and Oprah Winfrey, who produces Precious, was approached by Daniels to play the Jansens’ former maid, Anita, who narrates.

“She said, ‘Absolutely not,'” Daniels said. “And the universe took care of me, because I can’t imagine Oprah lying on a bed masturbating.” Macy Gray, among others, happily chimed in.

Maybe Maguire was put off by Van Wetter’s unsavory character, or maybe – who knows? – the moment he cums through his pants in prison. But it was Kidman and Efron who defied their director’s most scandalous request on the third day of filming, and went even further. (The first day, incidentally, was washing machine semi-rape, and the second day was telepathic prison sex. On the fourth day, you’re kind of hoping Kidman gets to lounge in her pajamas while other actors were doing their scenes.)

As Kidman revealed at Cannes, the film’s climax was no small stunt. The droplets we see landing on Efron’s chest were Kidman’s own urine. “Yes, I did the scene. This was what Lee wanted. It was in the script. And it’s pretty there.

“If you could have looked at Zac’s face!” Daniels would later remember this. “He’s supposed to pass out and he just has this smile on his face.”

Unusually for the director who recently had Glenn Close spewing unprintable filth as a possessed grandmother in The Deliverance, Daniels actually thought he had gone too far with The Paperboy and almost deleted the jellyfish scene . It was Kidman who convinced him when he called her one morning at 3 a.m., panicking while editing. According to Daniels, she said, “Lee, you made me piss on Zac Efron.” If you don’t put that in the movie, you’re losing your mind. I did it! I did it!

She did, and she sells it perfectly as Charlotte exasperatedly steps in to relieve Jack’s bites, like a territorial wildcat protecting her kitten.

There are entire books to be written about Kidman’s perverse history with younger men on screen. It all started with Gus Van Sant’s To Die For (1995), in which she slept with the teenage delinquent played by a gangly Joaquin Phoenix, only to trick him into killing her husband. In Jonathan Glazer’s Birth (2003), which was casually booed at its Venice premiere, she plays a struggling widow who insistently kisses a 10-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) because he claims to be the reincarnation of her late husband.

She wasn’t done with Efron. Later in The Paperboy, their characters finally hook up – except that’s the only sex scene in the film that we quietly cut, unlike the one mentioned above. In the Netflix romantic comedy A Family Affair (2024), they were brought together romantically: he played a self-centered movie star, while she was the mother of his stressed-out PA.

Now we have the antics of Kidman’s Babygirl with a playful (and extremely skilled) Dickinson, who is almost 30 years her junior. Babygirl is both serious and silly, perhaps a little less raunchy than you’ve heard, and a strange, thoughtful, exploratory drama about confused libidos. Put it side by side with The Paperboy, and it seems a little tame – but so is it.

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