Kidman has won dozens of major awards including an Oscar, Emmys and BAFTA Awards for her performances in The Hours, Moulin Rouge!, To Die For, Big Little Lies, and Being the Ricardos. Her first acting role was as a bleating sheep in a Christmas pageant.

Born in Honolulu to Australian parents, Kidman was raised in Sydney. Her father was a biochemist and clinical psychologist who also studied breast cancer, while her mother was a nursing instructor. They discussed current affairs at the dinner table and Kidman and her sister helped their parents hand out pamphlets for social causes such as the labor movement and women’s rights. The fair-skinned child liked the dark of the theatre, and she spent most of her time there, dropping out of high school.

She broke into movies at age 16, landing a role in the Australian holiday favorite Bush Christmas, in 1983. A flurry of small roles followed but her star turn was being cast as Tom Cruise’s doctor and love interest in Days of Thunder. After a whirlwind romance, she married the leading man on Christmas Eve 1990. Kidman achieved her real breakthrough with Gus Van Sant’s To Die For five years later, playing a fame-obsessed housewife. The performance proved she had range and comedic timing and earned her a Golden Globe.

She and Cruise disappeared from the public eye for the highly secretive shooting of sexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut. They successfully sued a tabloid for writing that they had to use a therapist to coach them on the sex scenes. Following miscarriages, in 1993 and 1995 they adopted a son and a daughter together, but they ended their marriage in 2001 citing career conflicts. Kidman subsequently married a fellow Australian, the country singer Keith Urban, and they had two more children. Kidman has said she wished she had 10.

Although she won the best actress Oscar for her transformational role in The Room as the novelist Virginia Woolf wearing a prosthetic nose, one of her most memorable performances was as Satine in the sensational Baz Luhrmann film MOULIN ROUGE! in which she also danced and sang. Nominated for eight Oscars, the film has recently been made into a musical which started its world tour in 2021.

The Tony Award-winning Broadway sensation Moulin Rouge! The Musical is currently wowing audiences at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre.