''Booty''
call … Kidman in The Paperboy.
Ed Gibbs, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports
Bouncing back from a string of disappointing films, Nicole Kidman
credits her natural instincts - and a willingness to pile on the kilos - for
her return to form in The
Paperboy.
The 44-year-old actress - who stars opposite John Cusack, Zac
Efron and Matthew McConaughey, as a trailer-trash bombshell trying to extricate
herself from an erratic convicted felon - also admits to being puzzled by talk
of a comeback. In a career that has seen all-time highs (an Oscar win, for The Hours) and, last year,
an almighty low, with her film Trespass
going straight to DVD, strategy did not, she insists, play any part
in her taking on the offbeat noir melodrama.
"I don't think in terms of my career," she told The Sun-Herald in Cannes
last week, prior to the film's world premiere at the festival. "I don't
have a premeditated [agenda], that's just not my nature in life. Both husbands
that I've been married to [ex, Tom Cruise, and current, Keith Urban] I married
within three, four months. That's just who I am. I choose roles that way,
too."
Kidman's performance includes a scene in which she urinates on a
fawning Zac Efron, his body mangled by jellyfish. Prior to that, she
re-imagines a certain interrogation sequence from Basic Instinct, in which Sharon Stone
famously flashed to camera. Critics have been unanimous in their praise of
Kidman's risque turn. The
Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy saluted the star for
"tramping it up", while The
Guardian's Peter Bradshaw hailed Kidman as "terrifically good
… funny, sexy, poignantly vulnerable".
Lee Daniels, who spent 13 years bringing Peter Dexter's swamp
thriller to the big screen, admits he pushed Kidman hard. Kidman, who
capitulated to her director's demands to add "more booty" to her
slender frame, says: "I don't over think things - I live and die on that.
It's spontaneous. Lee [Daniels] knows these people - he toughened me up, he put
me on the street.
I met with women that have relationships with men in prison. They
told me their stories, and I didn't judge.''
The Paperboy is running in the festival's official
competition for the top prize, the Palme D'Or.
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