Nicole Kidman AC (b. 1967), actress, made her film debut as a teenager in Bush Christmas in 1983. After a strong performance in the television mini-series Vietnam (1987) she starred in Dead Calm (1989), so impressing Tom Cruise that he invited her to Hollywood to co-star in Days of Thunder (1990). While she dazzled in the glamour role of Batman’s girlfriend in Batman Forever (1995), her Golden Globe – winning performance in To Die For (1995) announced her capacity for serious acting. After being nominated for a best actress Oscar and winning the Golden Globe for Moulin Rouge in 2002, in 2003 she became the first Australian woman ever to win an acting Oscar, for her performance as Virginia Woolf in The Hours. For the same film, she was named best actress at the BAFTAs and the Berlin Film Festival, and won the Golden Globe. Since then, her roles have been remarkably diverse. Over the past decade she has starred in Baz Luhrmann’s epic Australia (2008), the Australian drama The Railway Man (2013), the children’s film Paddington (2012), Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert (2015), the drama Lion (2016) and Sophia Coppola’s thriller The Beguiled (2017). In 2017 she took out both the Emmy and the Golden Globe for best actress for Big Little Lies and won the special 70th Anniversary Prize at Cannes. Worldwide queen of the red carpet, she has appeared in advertisements for Chanel, Omega, Jimmy Choo and Etihad Airways.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2003
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