Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life (2 page)

Nicole compensated for what she considered unfortunate physical attributes by being more daring, more willing to try new experiences, than her classmates, male and female. Once she decided to give sky diving a try, but Janelle thwarted that adventure by refusing to sign the parental consent form. Another time, while out of sight from her parents, she went to a black-market snake farm and allowed handlers to drape a boa constrictor around her shoulders. The snake entwined about her neck, but, thankfully, did not proceed into a deadly constriction. Nicole thought it was a hoot. She was invincible. Nothing could possibly stop her from experiencing life to its fullest.

After he became a clinical psychologist, Antony acquired well-thought-out theories of child development, especially as applied to adolescents. He wrote several, popular self-help books, all directed at conflict resolution and healthy living.

“It is partly through comparisons with other group members that adolescents learn about themselves and evaluate their experiences in school, at home and in the broader peer group,” he wrote in
Family Life: Adapting to Change.
When that happens, he says, adolescents sometimes learn that life with their friends’ parents might be even more difficult than life with their parents.  “As a point of reference, [he or she] may well revise their opinion of their mother and father and perhaps even change the way they behave toward them.”

Nicole didn’t have to have conversations with her peers to know that her parents were different from theirs. She was very much aware of that from an early age, perhaps dating back to when she was recruited by her mother to hand out feminist literature on the street. Nicole’s problems with her parents had less to do with them than with her own evolving concept of the type of person she was going to be as an adult.

She was always closer to her mother, but that was probably because her father was out of the house more often. One of the things that set her apart from her father was the subject of predetermination. As a psychologist, he is compelled to believe that one’s behavior can change one’s lot in life. Nicole, on the other hand, felt that everything in life, the good and the bad, is already predetermined. Asked by Australian television show host Ray Martin if she felt she could change her fate, she answered, “Oh yeah. You can affect it, of course. [But] I do think there are certain things and people that you are drawn to that are meant to be in your life. My dad . . . would say that’s hogwash. I challenge him on everything.”

Do you really?” asked Martin.

“I always have. My father is very pragmatic. Mostly my parents are very pragmatic, so I can be airy-fairy—I’m allowed. I like to believe in all those kinds of things. Just in terms of fate and those sorts of things. I’m a romantic, basically.”

~ ~ ~

When you look at Nicole’s childhood, the part about her acting out her fantasies and believing there is a place in the world that is meant for her and her alone, the inevitability of her chosen profession is difficult to deny. She was not so much made into an actress by her life experiences as she made her life experiences into a launching pad for becoming an actress. It is the classic escape route for an emotional “outsider,” which is what Nicole was growing up.

Nicole was always hearing the voices of happiness and excitement. They literally surrounded her at school and in her neighborhood, but seldom did she ever feel a part of it and seldom did she ever make an effort to join in with her peers.

Ballet was her first escape. She took dance lessons and tried to get all the neighborhood fitted in tutus. Then it was mime that grabbed her attention. She became fascinated with a professional mime company that worked the streets of Sydney. Antony was quietly supportive of Nicole’s acting ambitions, but Janelle played an active role in helping her daughter realize her dream of becoming an actress.

From ballet lessons to mime to acting, Janelle encouraged and supported Nicole’s childhood and adolescent dreams. Nicole was a youth member of St. Martins Theatre in Melbourne, and she tried out for and won roles in community theater productions in Sydney at the Phillip Street Theater and the Australian Theater for Young People.

“Each weekend I’d go to the theater at Phillip Street,” she told the Australian
edition of
Rolling Stone.
“I used to lock myself in there for the whole weekend. I thought it was fantastic. I’d be teased, ‘cause I’d be going off to the theater instead of going to the beach with the boys and all the girls. I felt like an outsider because of that. But it’s character building not to be a pretty child. You can’t rely on batting your eyes and saying, please can I have this!”

As a result of her devotion to the theater, she experienced her first kiss, not on the sandy beaches around Sydney and Melbourne, but onstage in front of an audience. She relished that kiss and thought about it constantly when she was not on stage. When she arrived at the theater, all she could think about was the upcoming kiss, how the boy’s lips would feel against hers, and how she would feel inside when she received the kiss.

 Actually, everything she learned about sex in those early years, she learned in the theater. Once, in a production of Frank Wedekind’s
Spring Awakening
, a story about sexual repression in the 1800s, Nicole startled her grandmother, who was sitting in the audience—and perhaps even herself—when she yelled out, as required for the character, “Beat me! Harder! Harder! Harder!” Afterward, to her surprise, her grandmother told her that she quite liked it.

  As a teenager, she appeared in a wide range of stage plays, including
Sweet Bird of Youth
and
The Seagull.
After one particularly strong performance at the Philip Street Theater, Nicole received a letter of praise from audience member Jane Campion, who was then a film student.

Nicole was an avid reader in her teens. When she was not at one of the three theaters that she worked out of, she devoted her time to books. It was only natural that she would try her hand at writing. At the age of thirteen, she entered—and won—a short story competition. Her story was about a young girl who got involved with an older man. Teachers would gasp, she told
USA Today,
and say things such as “What is this?” and “Who wrote this?”  Then they chastised her for venturing into adult themes, she said, “but it always interested me.”

By the age of fourteen, Nicole had every wannabe actor’s dream—an agent. She fantasized about going to America to become a movie star. Few people encouraged that line of thinking, but they did make her feel that success of some kind was within her grasp, if only in Australia where the competition was not so intense.  One of her first offers came from aspiring director Jane Campion, who hired her for a role in a film-school project; nothing came of it because Nicole dropped out because of exams. Champion sent her a postcard that said she hoped to some day direct her in a “classic.”

After two years of struggling to balance her duties at school with her ambitions to become an actress, Nicole made the first major decision of her life. At the age of sixteen, she decided to drop out of high school and pursue acting full-time. Her mother was supportive of her decision, telling her that she was glad that she had a dream to follow, but her father was not so supportive, feeling that she would regret not getting an education. Neither Nicole nor her father has ever said much publicly about his position on the matter, but whatever his level of opposition he clearly did not stand in her way.

“I was a nightmare to my parents,” Nicole told
Movieline
magazine. “I lied to them. There was a time when my mother said, ‘I can’t live in the same house with her.’ It wasn’t all roses. But that also put me in good stead [for the future]. Because I grew up in a family that yelled a lot, I don’t cower [now]. People would lose their tempers in our house, things would be thrown, and an hour later we’d sit around and have a laugh.” 

 As Nicole’s dreams of stardom intensified, so did her hormone production. Boys who had scorned her in years past now saw redeeming value in her pale blue eyes and in her long, coltish legs. Nicole responded to the long-awaited attention and fell into her moments of boy craziness. Her first boyfriend was named Doug. He was a surfer and a carpenter and she was especially attracted to his workingman’s hands.

“I do have a hand fetish,” she told
Rolling Stone.
“Powerful hands that can be gentle. Oooooh. Girls’ hands I don’t care about. I can appreciate their beauty, but I’m not interested. Men’s hands playing guitar? Watching the hands move on a guitar?”

Antony and Janelle had what many people would consider an unusual attitude toward Nicole’s dates. Because Janelle was concerned about men who drink and drive, she insisted that Nicole’s dates stay overnight in their home—not in the guest room, mind you, but in Nicole’s bedroom. Of course, the young men were admonished to sleep in a separate bed and behave themselves.

Antony’s progressive attitudes toward Nicole’s dating habits were confirmed in his writings. “Dating is a valuable source of experience for the adolescent,” he once wrote. “A moderate degree of dating, with serious involvement delayed until late adolescence, appears to be a good pattern .  .  . For many young adults, moving in with a boyfriend or girlfriend is now seen as yet another stage in the development of a relationship, somewhere between going steady and marriage.” 

Nicole’s romance with Doug lasted about six months; then she moved on and established a new relationship with a boy named Rick. Antony and Janelle watched and waited. They were liberal parents, but their willingness to accommodate Nicole during her trek through adolescence seems to have had little to do with ideology—or even Antony’s professional beliefs as a psychologist. Clearly they did what they did because they loved her and feared losing her during what they correctly perceived to be a confusing time in her life.

~ ~ ~

Dropping out of school put a lot of pressure on Nicole to succeed in her chosen career. As a result, she was tireless in her quest to land a role in a movie. She networked with people who were associated with the theaters—and she went door to door. Mostly, she encountered rejections, but occasionally she received words of support.

Finally, at the age of sixteen, she got the break she had been hoping for when she was hired to play the role of Helen in the made-for-television movie
Bush Christmas
(re-titled
Prince and The Great Race
when it was released in video). Filmed north of New South Wales in Beaudesert Shire, Queensland, it was a Disney-style movie about the adventures of a horse named Prince.

The plot in this well-crafted film is straightforward. As Christmas approaches, the Thompson family learns it is in danger of losing its farm if it cannot raise the money to pay the mortgage before January 1. Their only hope is to win an upcoming horse race that offers a cash purse. Nicole is one of three children on the farm. In one of the early scenes, before the adventure begins, the entire family goes to a barn-style dance, where an up-tempo country music band named Bushwacker performs.

Sixteen-year-old Nicole whirls about the dance floor doing a two-step, her bushy, dark hair seemingly out of place in conservative surroundings. The interesting thing about the band is that the lead singer is dressed in a Garth Brooks-style hat and shirt—and he sings in a style that predates Brooks’s music by at least six years. It is not known if Brooks ever saw
Bush Christmas
, but, if he did not, it is an amazing coincidence that he would develop such a similar style.

Overnight, two horse thieves steal Prince. When they awaken the next morning, Nicole, her two brothers, and an aborigine named Manalpuy go after the horse. It is a classic children’s odyssey, pitting the determined children against the wily horse thieves. At one point they stumble upon a place sacred to the aborigine. Manalpuy pushes her away because it is forbidden to females. He tells her that she must pretend she never saw it. Nicole walks away in a huff, but later apologizes.

“I’m sorry about your sacred place,” she said. “I didn’t know. Can you forgive me?”

“I will but my people will not,” he replies solemnly.

 That night, they dine on lizard and insects, and the next morning they celebrate Christmas (thus the title
Bush Christmas
). They eventually catch up with the thieves and rescue the horse. That done, their task is to get the horse back in time for the race.

Bush Christmas
was not the kind of film that could catapult Nicole into international stardom, but it went over very well in Australia and has since become a Christmas classic, telecast each holiday with the same reverence afforded
It’s A Wonderful Life
in the United States.