Equity Mag Sep_17 Book Folder

COVER STORY
had so much loss and tragedy. It’s a big thing in
my life, things, people getting taken suddenly.
Stanley [Kubrick], my father. I hear a phone call
at 3am and I’m terrified.” But she adds, pluckily:
“I’m determined to beat it.”
They go everywhere together, her, Keith and the
kids – packed onto the tour bus with dad or on
location with mom, off to Morocco for Werner
Herzog’s Queen of the Desert or Cincinnati for
Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer, out
in November. “We’re very tight,” she says. “And
we’re hard to penetrate, we’ve been told.” We
almost have our own language.” The balance is
immensely precious to her. “I’ve lost a marriage by
not being willing to have that happen. My daughter
came running in yesterday screaming – she had a
tick. And I’m thinking, gosh, I’m so glad I’m here
to take the tick out. I don’t want to miss those
things, so that’s why I now say no to a lot. The
career I have in my imagination is superb. The one
I have in reality is sort of back on track in a way.”
She has just completed a film called Untouchable,
and one with Joel Edgerton called Boy Erased, with
Russell Crowe – another childhood friend, from
the age of 14 – as her husband. Liane Moriarty, the
creator of Big Little Lies, is about to turn in a
novella, commissioned exclusively by the
producers to see if there's another series in there.
Then Kidman is off to Australia to film Aquaman
for James Wan, a Malaysian -Australian director.
“I wanted to do something nobody would think I
would do, and I know James,” she says. “I play
Queen Atlanna. She births a superhero. I said to
James, ‛If I’m birthing a superhero, you better give
me a good birth scene. And the Queen. Come on. I
was, like, okay. Now we’re talking.” What will her
daughters do when they find Queen Atlanna in the
kitchen? “They’ll be, like, ‘Yeah, yeah, where's the
crown? ” Her laugh fills the room.
It’s hard to be a wife
and a mother and do
those performances,
Emotionally it’s taxing.
I would love to be able
to turn it on and turn it
off that easily
29
EQUITY