Eventually, Keith formed a three-piece country band, The Ranch, that was offered a recording contract by Capitol Records. Their first—and only—album The Ranch was released in 1997 and charted two singles, “Walkin’ the Country” and “Just Some Love.” A third song on the album, “Some Days You Gotta Dance,” was covered two years later by the Dixie Chicks on their album, Fly. Keith, who had earned a reputation as a superb musician, was asked to play guitar on the song, providing him with his first brush with musical stardom. He was one of eleven guitarists on the album, most of whom were chosen for specific songs, abruptly replacing Tommy Nash on guitar and Bobby Charles Jr. who had been with the band since 1995.
Two years later, the same year that Nicole appeared in her controversial film, Eyes Wide Shut, Keith released his first solo album, Keith Urban. It did very well, going platinum and giving him his first Number One song, “But for the Grace of God.” In 2002 his second album, Golden Road, earned him even more plaudits, with the single, “Somebody Like You,” which was named by Billboard the biggest country hit of the decade. Another single of that album, “You’ll Think of Me,” landed him his first Grammy. By the time he built up the courage to ask Nicole out on a date after their meeting at the Australian salute party, he had released his third album in the United States, one that earned him platinum certification four times over (indicating 4 million albums sold). Simply put, he was a big deal in American country music.
The romance got off to a slow, well-paced start because Nicole had learned from her past high-profile mistakes. The only thing worse than ending a romance was the pain associated with reliving the breakup each time photographers and reporters asked, “What happened?” Nicole and Keith kept their relationship a secret. She didn’t want her children to meet Keith until she had a better idea where the relationship was going.
What she learned during that process was that they had a lot in common, beginning with their ability to literally speak the same language. Their Australian upbringings served as an anchor that steadied them as they probed each other for relationship compatibility. What they discovered was that they had the same basic needs, hopefully needs that they could satisfy in each other. In a moment of remarkable candor, Nicole explained their initial relationship to a writer from Vanity Fair: “I think we were two lonely people. I would probably say that two very lonely people managed to meet at a time when they could open themselves to each other. We were a mixture of frightened and brave.”
Of course, as every therapist worth his or her salt knows, people who speak of loneliness are often expressing alienation that is a result of depression. In later years, Nicole admitted that she frequently suffered from depression, but it took a while for her to recognize loneliness as a symptom of depression more so than a state of being.
Nicole and Keith had the best-kept secret in show business until they made their first appearance together at the February 2006 Grammys. Four months later, they were married in front of about two hundred close friends and family members. Within months their fairy-tale romance was severely tested by Keith’s admission into the Betty Ford clinic for three months of rehab for alcohol abuse. No sooner had Nicole ended her loneliness than she found herself alone once again, only this time it was as the wife of an alcoholic who was surrounded by caregivers and other addicts with similar problems. They chose to make his problem public. Keith issued a statement apologizing for the pain that he had caused those close to him, especially his new wife.
For Nicole, the revelation of Keith’s addiction was just another wicked twist and turn in her life. She wasn’t frightened by it, or if she was, she wasn’t about to throw up her arms and flee to New York or Los Angeles. If you were going to be married to someone in recovery, Nashville was as good a place as any to live. It is a friendly city with a world-class medical community. Few families in the music business there are untouched by alcohol or cocaine addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are as plentiful as fast-food restaurants.
The biggest problem facing the couple was what to do about the travel requirements of their different careers. They decided their odds of making it were better if they stuck as close to each other as possible so that one always would be there to support the other. When he went on the road to perform, she tried to be backstage. When she made a movie, he traveled to the location and kept her company. They soon learned that they both were addictive personalities. His weakness was alcohol and perhaps cocaine. Hers was the intoxicating sense of wellbeing she felt when she was not battling her lifelong demon of loneliness.
When Nicole went to Australia that year to film Baz Luhrmann’s epic Australia, Keith flew home every ten days to be with her. The movie was a romantic adventure epic co-starring Hugh Jackman. Set in Australia just prior to World War II it centered on an English aristocrat played by Nicole who inherits a large ranch. Sensing her unfamiliarity with the cattle business, British cattle barons plot to take away her land. To fight them she forms an alliance with a seasoned cattle drover played by Jackman. For four years, they struggle, enter into a love affair, and experience the bombing of Darwin during World War II.
Australia was the first film she had begun since her marriage to Keith and for some reason she felt intensely uncomfortable throughout filming, especially when it came time to do the love senses with Jackson. Was it because it was the first time she had done a love sense while married to someone she truly loved—and while she was pregnant? Just before shooting began she learned that she was pregnant for the second time in her life. The first time was while she was married to Tom. The pregnancy never developed because it was ectopic.
One day she scheduled an ultrasound and telephoned Keith, who was in Los Angles at the time. He flew out of Los Angles on a Monday night and landed in Australia on a Wednesday (losing the customary day in flight). He had lunch with Nicole and they went to the ultrasound together. Afterward, he caught a flight back and performed in Salt Lake City the night he arrived.
Whatever the reason, her feelings about the film baffled Nicole and she left Australia with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Two years later, Nicole did something she almost never did. She went to the Australian premier of the film as a favor to Luhrmann, with whom she had made Moulin Rouge. At her side was Keith. As she viewed the film, she felt a deep sense of embarrassment over her performance. She actually squirmed in her seat. Later, she shocked reporters by admitting, “I can’t look at this movie and be proud of what I’ve done. She told the Sidney Daily Mail: “I sat there and I looked at Keith and went ‘Am I any good in this movie?’ It’s just impossible for me to connect to it emotionally at all.”
Nicole and Keith fled Australia immediately after the premier because she did not want to read anything in the newspapers about the film. She confessed that of all the movies she had made the only two she had actually sat through in a theater were Australia and Moulin Rouge. That is not an uncommon occurrence. Unlike musicians, who will listen to their recordings until they go tone deaf, many actors and authors refuse to revisit their creations once completed.
Interestingly, the year they married, her film Fur was released. Based on Patricia Bosworth’s 1984 biography of Diane Arbus, the film is essentially an exploration of Sigmund Freud’s theory of sexual fetishism. Nicole plays Arbus, wife of a commercial photographer who encourages his wife to venture out into the world to take photographs of her own.
Shy and unsure of herself, Diane finds herself attracted to a mysterious man upstairs, played by Robert Downey Jr., who wears a mask when he goes outside the building. She works up the courage to knock on his door and soon becomes seduced by his secretive nature. When she learns that he suffers from hypertrichosis, better known as werewolf syndrome, a disease that causes his face and entire body to be covered with fur, she falls in love with him and sneaks out of her husband's bed at night to explore the underworld of individuals with various shocking disabilities—giants, dwarfs, people with no arms, and Siamese twins, to name a few.
> As if often the case with extreme shyness, mental illness is the bogeyman lurking beneath Nicole's character. No one does "crazy" better than Nicole and she shines in this role, projecting a sane exterior—doesn't love conquer all?—while masking her character's descent into a quiet kind of madness that masquerades as the pursuit of loving relationship. She abandons her husband and children, and engages in behaviors that are dangerous and self-destructive. Nicole appears nude in this film, but in keeping with the story's theme, the nudity is not meant to make her appear glamorous.
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In 2008 Nicole escaped the jinx of her earlier ectopic pregnancy and gave birth at a Nashville hospital to a baby girl they named Sunday Rose Kidman Urban. Nicole’s father suggested the name—it is the name of a famous Australian art collector—and Nicole and Keith embraced it because Sunday is their favorite day of the week. As Nicole explained to Britain’s Telegraph, “Sundays are a very lonely day. And if you’re happy and you’ve got your family and the things around you, then Sunday’s a beautiful day. So our baby’s called Sunday.”
Later, during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Nicole proudly showed off a black and white photograph of Sunday and her cuddled up together, eyes closed. The photograph had been taken by Keith on his iPhone. Nicole laughed that she looked more like Keith than her, though she conceded that Sunday had her fair skin.
Incredulous at their good luck—Nicole called Sunday her miracle baby because she had tried so many years without success to get pregnant—they wasted no time attempting to have a second child. They soon learned that was unlikely to happen for reasons linked to her previous miscarriage. Sunday truly was a miracle baby.
Instead, they turned to a surrogate to have their second child. Faith Margaret was born in December 2010 at the same Nashville hospital where Nicole had given birth to their first child Sunday. Faith was a biological child of both Keith and Nicole. As the child grew, it soon became obvious that she was the spitting image of Nicole, wispy red hair and all. They kept the birth secret until they attended the Golden Globe Awards in January 2011. In a press release, they said: “Our family is truly blessed, and just so thankful, to have been given the gift of baby Faith Margaret. No words can adequately convey the incredible gratitude that we feel for everyone who was so supportive throughout this process, in particular our gestational carrier.”
Nicole and Keith never fully explained their choice of a name for Faith, but one wonders if it was not done as a reminder of the decision that Faith Hill faced when she began her family. She put her career on hold to devote full time to her children and to work on her marriage with Tim McGraw, who was being increasingly demobilized by alcoholism. Faith’s decision may have bolstered her relationship with her children, but it ended up costing her career by reminding everyone, once again, that second acts in entertainment are far and few between.
Sadly, as Nicole’s family with Keith grew, her family with Tom fractured somewhat as both Connor and Bella indicated they preferred to live in Los Angeles with their father. She continued to visit with them, but she was no longer a full-time mother to them. Nicole was disappointed in their decision, but she understood that they had bonded with their father and had long-standing attachments to Los Angeles. She explained it to People this way: “My daughter and son, their life is molded by the way I live. If I wasn’t willing to take on that responsibility, I shouldn’t have adopted them. Then it can be argued that you shouldn’t have gotten divorced, and that’s true, too, but sometimes you don’t have a decision in that. People fall out of love, they do.”
Nicole and Keith embraced parenthood by making the children, including Connor and Bella, a part of their professional lives. When Keith goes on tour, Nicole accompanies him with the children if she is not making a movie. If she is working, more often than not, Faith and Sunday go on the road with Keith, sometimes sitting backstage, other times occupying a place of honor in the audience. Other times Keith and children join her when she is on location. When she is away from the children, she admits to awakening at 3 a.m. with a panicky feeling, wondering about them and what they are doing.
Nicole understands the challenges that face her as a mother. Raised a Catholic in a household in which her psychologist father instilled in her an understanding of human behavior, she knows it will be a constant struggle to keep her values intact while protecting her children from the perils of stardom. Clearly, Nicole and Keith, and Nicole and Tom, are doing everything possible to protect their children, but the older the children become the more difficult that challenge will be, especially for the adopted children.
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In 2011, Nicole began work on her most controversial film since Eyes Wide Shut. Based on Pete Dexter's novel of the same name, The Paperboy is a Southern gothic, psycho-sexual thriller set in Florida in the late 1960s. A newspaper reporter (Matthew McConaughey) returns to his hometown to investigate a case involving a death row inmate (John Cusack). Accompanying the reporter is a black colleague (David Oyelowo) who can't hide his disdain for white Southerners. The plot is complicated by the fact that it is the reporter's hometown, his father owns the local newspaper, and the reporter's younger brother has recently been unlucky in love.
The final complication is Nicole Kidman's character Charlotte Bless, a trashy sex-obsessed woman who has a fixation on the death row inmate. Because she has been corresponding with him, the reporter takes her with him for his first interview. Things quickly get out of hand when the inmate, sitting across the room, asks Charlotte to spread her legs and simulate oral sex on him, a request that Nicole the actress delivers with breathtaking conviction.
There are absolutely no likeable characters in the entire film. Nicole's characters usually end up being likeable if nothing else, but not in this case. She is fascinating in the sheer magnitude of her slutty conquests (not only does she do the inmate, she does the younger brother and the reporter's black colleague, explaining that there is nothing more natural than sex), but she has no redeeming qualities, except perhaps her willingness to urinate on the younger brother to ease the pain of multiple jellyfish stings. Director Lee Daniels had second thoughts about leaving the urination scene in the film, but Nicole insisted that it was appropriate for the character she was playing. The only thing in the film that Nicole refused to do was to utter the N-word. The director insisted, but she explained she had an African-American son and wouldn't do it.
The sex scenes in the film are rough and primal, the kind of lovemaking you would expect in a swamp inhabited by witless rednecks and alligators in heat. Nicole got into character for the sex scenes and provided such an enthusiastic performance that the director noticed that when she returned to the set the next day her legs were covered in bruises, the result of simulated rough sex.
Barked the director: "You crazy bitch—go put some makeup on your legs!"
She did as she was asked. She hadn't even noticed the bruises.
"Kidman takes it to the limit as the prison groupie, slapping on the older-woman allure, Barbie-doll wig, lashes black as beetles, and any number of itsy-bitsy outfits in acid yellows and oranges," wrote Anthony Quinn for Great Britain's Independent. "It's like her news-reporter siren from To Die For twenty years on, and she positively devours the role."
One of the fascinating things about watching Nicole deliver a performance as a crazed, slutty woman is that in your heart you know that she is the opposite of the character she is portraying. There is something immensely appealing about witnessing a beautiful woman act out sexual fantasies that run counter to her basic instincts, a little like watching a gum-chewing nun do a pole dance wearing nothing but sunglasses. She becomes the Beauty and the Beast, all wrapped into one person, a self-exiled slave to her passion, hell bent on travelling where other women fear to go. Morality ceases to be an issue.
Later in the year, she received terrifying news that a polyp had been discovered on Keith’s vocal chords. He underwent surgery on November 11, 2011, to have it removed and he was in
structed not to utter a word for three full weeks. As if that were not bad enough, he was instructed that he could not even laugh. How was he going to do that in a household with two little girls and an actress wife?
Nicole and Keith were limited in their communications to writing notes to each other. When they disagreed, they did so in writing, with Keith sometimes writing that Nicole’s comment was “unacceptable.” Oh, to have been a fly on the wall to witness them hastily scrawling notes to each other, ripping paper from tablets and tossing it away, and then making up with hugs and kisses.
Once the three months were up, they had to face the moment of his first post-operative attempt at speaking. Nicole was fraught with worry. Would he sound the same? Would he have a different voice? Would he still be able to sing? The build up to “speech day” made a nervous wreck of her. Finally, when the time came, they faced it with the solemnity of a statue unveiling.
Keith spoke. Nicole listened. They both broke down in tears when they realized that he had made a complete recovery. “How many people experience their husband’s first word?” she explained to W magazine. “If that doesn’t bring you closer, you’re not breathing.”
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In December 2013, Nicole and Keith traveled to Australia to attend her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. When they returned to the United States it was time for Keith to resume work on American Idol for the live portions of the program. In the Fall, Keith had joined fellow panelists Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick Jr. to begin taping his second season as a judge on American Idol. The television exposure has magnified his star wattage many times over and made him more than just another country music sensation. He won over viewers with a mixture of compassion toward the contestants and honest evaluation of musical talent, all done without the inflated ego tug-o-wars that have characterized previous panelists. The emotional attachment he made with the contestants came as a complete surprise to him. He found himself thinking like a football coach, urging certain contestants to do better, work harder, or believe more in themselves.
Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life Page 23
