Sydney - She's a Hollywood actor whose flawless face
radiates from a thousand magazine covers. An Oscar-winner and new
mother, she's married to another big-name Australian in the
performing arts.
She's Cate Blanchett and Australians adore her. With playwright
hubby Andrew Upton, she manages to run the Sydney Theatre Company and
star in films.
Blanchett unites Australians in devotion; Nicole Kidman, the
nation's other screen goddess, divides them. People rarely bad-mouth
Blanchett; the internet is full of bile about Kidman.
Since last month's premiere of Australia, a Baz Luhrmann film in
which she stars alongside Hugh Jackman, Kidman has had to read some
dreadful reviews and fend off some very hurtful barbs.
Melanie Reid, writing in the London Times, said she's 'one of the
most overrated actors in the world, a woman who has been the kiss of
death in practically every movie she has starred in.'
Listeners to radio stations in Sydney, her home town, have rung in
to condemn her character and her performance in the most expensive
film ever made in Australia. Readers of national newspapers have
written in to blame her personally for the disappointing box office
takings.
She has been berated for leaving her homeland. Like country
crooner Keith Urban, a fellow Australian and the father of her
5-month-old daughter, she has lived in the United States for most of
the past 20 years.
Internet sites have sprung up deriding Kidman for being 'frozen,
brittle and vapid' and for having the 'emotional scope of a spoon.'
She has been called a liar for denying her beauty is chemically
enhanced.
Industry people have galloped to her defence. Margaret Pomerantz,
perhaps Australia's best-known film reviewer, praised Kidman's lead
role in the romantic melodrama as 'quite the loveliest I've seen
Nicole on screen.'
New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis declared her
'wonderfully and fully expressive here, from wince-worthy start to
heartbreaking finish, whether she's wrinkling her nose in mock
disgust or rushing across a dusty field, her arms pumping so wildly
that it's a wonder well water doesn't spring from her mouth.'
Some have wondered aloud whether the cool reception for Luhrmann's
epic, and the likelihood that it won't recoup its cost, will see
Kidman's acting career fade away.
A renewed delight in family life could keep her at home in
Nashville, Tennessee anyway.
'The rhythm of my life has certainly changed,' Kidman told
reporters in Paris at the European launch of Australia. 'Now, I want
to keep telling some beautiful stories ... but a lot of me is about
just getting to my family.'
Recent films - Cold Mountain, Bewitched, The Interpreter, The
Golden Compass and The Invasion - haven't filled cinemas. She hasn't
had a big box-office success since winning an Oscar for The Hours in
2003.
Defending her record earlier this year, Kidman said: 'You're
either good at what you do and you'll be employed, or you won't. I
think it's that simple.'
Kidman, now 41, has spoken before of retiring when she reached 40.
Speaking to the newspaper USA Today last month, the former wife of
fellow Hollywood star Tom Cruise said she was ready to sacrifice to
make her second marriage work.
'We're both willing to move mountains to make it work - and you
still touch wood. You commit to it and say 'whatever we can do that's
humanly possible, we're going to do,'' she said.
Kidman met Urban, 40, in January 2005 and they married 18 months
later. Sunday Rose is her first child, although she adopted two
children during her 10-year marriage to Cruise, a union that ended in
2001.
USA
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