How To Save Nicole Kidman's Career



(image via celebrityandworld)

The magnificent failure of Baz Luhrman's "Australia" will, unfairly, fall at the foot of Nicole Kidman's Ferragamos. The backlash has already started. Melanie Reed writes with real venom in The Times:

"Kidman is one of those women who turns other women off. And no, not just because she's pretty and we're jealous. It is because we perceive, and men don't, that 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.

"Kidman is exquisitely accomplished at being awful. Did anyone see Cold Mountain? The sweeping American epic (note: another epic) foundered on the rocks of her gormless mirror-gaze. She can't act."

Bullshit, with all due respect to The Times. Has Melanie Reed -- a critic and not an actor, we cannot fail to note -- ever seen The Others? It would be instructive if she did. Kidman carries the film, holding the almost unbearable mood of slow menace through nearly three hours. And Nicole -- can we call her Nicole? -- did this while she was getting a divorce from the film's executive producer after suffering a miscarriage. If that's not evidence of talent deserving of our respect as smart observers, then The Corsair does not know what is.

Nic Kidman -- can we call her "Nic" -- is a perfectly lovely woman. So far as we know she has never, with the possibility of a vague slight to her ex-husband's height, spoken badly of another actor that she has worked with (or, that she has not worked with). Still, that hasn't stopped the press, the blogosphere, and seemingly everyone else from attacking Kidman's alleged use of botox and sometimes stretching those literally skin-deep critiques into some larger argument about her supposed lack of acting ability.

WTF?!

Clearly Kidman is in need of some career reconnoitering. When Mickey Rourke calls you, unprompted, "an ice cube," you need to shake things up, bitchslap the management team.

Nicole Kidman is not cold. She is a mother who has adopted two kids -- one African-American -- that supports a number of charities and is pals with Naomi Watts and Thandie Newton. She has dated the racy Q-Tip, among others (all, we cannot fail to note, fairly hunkish). Nicole's debut in the sleeper hit "Dead Calm" was red-hott, suspenseful, launching the soft hero a the proto-sympathetic damsel-in-distress with a spleen of iron. From whence did this image of "Ice Princess" come from? Some advice on countering that image:

-- Be Political. At this point in time, Nicole Kidman has nothing to lose. It would behoove her to become the bete noir of waterheads like Rush Limbaugh. Her work with charities is well-documented. Closely held political positions humanized Al Gore who, previous to his environmentalism was regarded as wooden. How better to thaw an image as being cold-blooded than to espouse sharp political beliefs?

-- We would counsel that Kidman does SNL. Nicole hasn't been on the not-yet-ready-for-Prime-Time players since 1993, back when Norm Macdonald was a castmember. That needs to change with the quickness. Appearing on the show would: a) show that she is not too "A-List" to visit the small screen, b) Give Kidman a chance to ridicule the botox, the "Hours" nose and the plastic surgery talk, and c) Take Nicole off the covers of the Conde Nast fashion and beauty magazines where she seems ethereal and annoying and make her appear more human (which, mirabile dictu, she happens to be).

-- Do "30 Rock," as well on the same principle. It did wonders for the calculating Jennifer Aniston, whom we actually really do dislike (sniff-sniff). If a one-dimensional robot like Jennifer Aniston can come off as a living, breathing, sexy human being after "30 Rock," imagine what the madcap sitcom could do for a multi-dimensional actress like Kidman. Kidman needs to act comedically opposite Alec Baldwin, who can make anyone look good. That aggressive Irish bastards got the gift of gab (sometimes too much).

Could you imagine Kidman, poking fun of her "icy" image, playing, with meta-winks and studies curtsies, the jungle-feverish love interest of our favorite train wreck Tracy Morgan? And what if Kidman slipped accents throughout the show poking fun at the psychological homelessness of playing so many period pieces. Kidman could play the ultimate comedic psycho. Comedy, on the small screen, could not inconceivably be Nicole Kidman's "special friend," transforming her from icon into "round the way girl."

-- No more sweeping, romantic epics. That stuff is the shits. Everyone in the world has been on a date and seen Nicole Kidman on the screen staring back wondering if we were going to get lucky. No more date movies! With the exception of "Cold Mountain," the romantic period pieces don't really do much for Kidman beyond the critics. Nicole Kidman has done enough sweeping epics to say goodbye to that thankless, godawful genre.

-- Enough with the Conde Nast covers. Okay, we get it -- Nicole Kidman is glamorous. Cool. Oversaturating the Conde covers, however, is as typecasting as, say, performing in 1,001 sweeping, romantic epics.

The failure of "Australia" is bound to bring out the Kidman haters. We hope someone somewhere passes some of this advice to Kidman's "people."