Nicole Kidman and family in town for wee visit

Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman. Credit: Kevork Djansezian/AP

Annette Sharp, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Fresh from Cannes and all the controversy that followed her being required to pee on her co-star in her latest film, Nicole Kidman flew home to Sydney on Thursday with husband Keith Urban and two pretty young daughters Sunday and Faith.

Looking summery in a floral and cream boho sundress following a week in the south of France, Kidman and her family will settle back into Sydney life for the next three weeks while Urban records The Voice.

Devoted father Urban has been happy enough to remain in his wife's shadow while she promoted The Paperboy with co-stars Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey at Cannes, but yesterday as the pair pulled open the shutters at their Lavender Bay apartment, sources said Kidman was equally delighted to take a back seat now that Keith is enjoying unprecedented fame in Australia.

Kidman heads to Thailand later this month to shoot Death Railway alongside Colin Firth.

Firth plays real-life British Army officer Eric Lomax who was sent to a Japanese POW camp in 1942 and was sent to work on the construction of the Burma Railway.

Kidman plays his wife Patti in the film.

Trampy turn gives Nicole edge

''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.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban happy and in love at the Cannes Film Festival

The Lavin gown showed off Nicole Kidman's body to perfection. Picture: AP

The Daily Mail reports

The Cannes Film Festival has certainly brought out the romantic side between happily married Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.

The country music star and judge on The Voice came out to support his Hollywood actress wife for the premiere of her new movie, The Paperboy.

Proud Keith embraced the 44-year-old actress several times, showering her with kisses and cuddles.

The doting singer even carried his wife's clutch bag as they shared their amorous public display of affection.

Keith let his wife have her time in the spotlight as she walked the red carpet.

The pair then partied together at popular hotspot Beach Club.

Kidman arrived at the premiere in a rose coloured draped Lavin dress that cutaway to reveal her toned upper body.

Kidman's co-star Zac Efron, 24, looked decidedly dapper in a tuxedo as did fellow stars John Cusack and Matthew McConaughey.

The Paperboy is set in the 1960s, with Efron playing an aspiring writer helping his journalist brother, played by McConaughey, investigate a possible miscarriage of justice.

In the film, Efron's Jack falls for Kidman's sparky but sultry femme fatale, who is in turn obsessed with a death row inmate, played by Cusack.

The cast also includes singer Macy Gray as Jack's family maid and surrogate mother, and British actor David Oyelowo as an ambitious big-city journalist.

Kidman worked hard to create Charlotte Bless, interviewing women who were in love with convicts and putting together the character's bold look.

"I'd been looking as an actor for something raw and something dangerous," Kidman said.

"I may be uncomfortable watching the movie. But that's my job - it's my job to give over to something, not to censor it, not to put my own judgments of how I feel as Nicole playing the character. I am there to portray a truth.

"I don't want to be pigeonholed.

"I'm willing to fail because of that. I just want to try."

Efron, who spends much of the film in his underpants, said he felt uncomfortable filming - but that's the way he wanted it.

"I don't think I was supposed to feel comfortable," the former High School Musical star told Cannes.

"It's like life. This character is supposed to be learning the ways of the world, and that can be very uncomfortable. But it's also exciting."

The Paperboy has drawn mixed response in Cannes, where it is one of 22 films up for the Palme d'Or, to be awarded Sunday.

But the actors seem to have adored the experience.

Efron said working with Kidman had been a dream.

"I've been in love with her for a long time - since Moulin Rouge," Efron said.

"It was the loveliest time in the world for me."

Director Lee's last film, Precious, was a surprise hit that won two Academy Awards in 2010.

His next will be The Butler, the story of a long-serving White House staffer in which McConaughey plays John F. Kennedy and Cusack is Richard Nixon.

Butler, Worthington, McConaughey join CG, 3-D "Thunder Run"

Reuters’ Tim Kenneally reports


LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Gerard Butler, Sam Worthington and Matthew McConaughey have joined the cast of Freedom Films' upcoming Iraq war movie "Thunder Run," Freedom's CEO Brian Presley announced Thursday.


The film, which will be an all-CG, 3-D effort, is based on David Zucchino's novel "Thunder Run - The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad," which chronicled the taking of Baghdad by American military forces in 2003. Ken Nolan, the screenwriter for "Black Hawk Down," and Robert Port are adapting.


"Thunder Run" will employ the same motion-capture technology as used in "Avatar," and a proprietary facial-capture technology that the Graphic Film Company is using in the upcoming "Night of the Living Dead: Origins 3-D" -- which, like "Thunder Run," is directed by Simon West.


"We are very excited to have attracted this outstanding level of acting and writing talent. 'Thunder Run' will be the first ever conventional war film made to utilize this revolutionary facial and motion capture technology and state of the art CG and 3D," Presley said. "Simon and I have developed this project over the last five years so it will be nice to see it come alive."