Just Kidman: She's Having the Time of Her Life For years, she was probably most famous for being Mrs Tom Cruise. But as her has marriage crumbled, so her career has taken off. Now, with the smart money on an oscar for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in Stephen Daldry's The Hours, Nicole Kidman is having the time of her life It's 3am and Nicole Kidman is in a Brazilian striptease bar on Melrose Avenue.The club is dark, dingy and packed to the brim with a cool Hollywood crowd. They barely bat an eyelid at the presence of Kidman and her most recent co-star, Jude Law. Earlier the same evening she had the eyes of the world trained on her as she picked up a Golden Globe for her much-lauded performance as Virginia Woolf in The Hours. The venue we're in now is a far cry from the subsequent film-business frenzy going on all over town. A narrow corridor of wooden staging runs along the room and a beaded curtain provides both backdrop and prop for a series of exotic dancers with rubberband bodies. Their contortions draw whoops and cheers from the small crowd which, along with Nicole and Jude, includes The Hours director Stephen Daldry and his wife Lucy, author Michael Cunningham and a group of friends. On stage, a fishnet-stockinged and satin-knickered temptress shakes her bottom in a Sufi-style blur. Kidman is restlessly trying to wriggle about to the music in her red leather armchair, constricted by the corsetry of her boned 'Tom Ford for YSL' ball gown. She politely declines an invitation to dance from cutely dishevelled Rob. 'My friends are too afraid to ask you, but I'm not,' he says, pointing to her lethal stilettos in explanation. Then she turns to me, raises a perfect eyebrow, eyes twinkling with tequila oblivion and stage whispers in mock horror over the loud music: 'Oh my God... what are we doing here?' It's definitely a rhetorical question. Three days earlier I had interviewed her at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hollywood. The upcoming Golden Globe Awards had meant that the four-square-mile area encompassing the city's grandest hotels and restaurants was awash with movie mania. In the lobby, pornographer Larry Flynt glided by, reptilian in his gold wheelchair. I blinked and rubbed my jet-lagged eyes. Through the blur I saw Queen Latifah strutting in his wake. Kidman and I had arranged to meet following an American Film Institute luncheon. One of a non-stop series of parties, lunches and mini award ceremonies that lead up to the awards. She emerged through the crowded lobby looking fragile and coltish among the Hollywood heavyweights. We head for a corner table in the bar, order coffee and water and she sits opposite me. Straight backed, in black coat and powder-blue dress, her perfectly coiffured hair a breakaway halo of curls and her dairy-queen skin utterly flawless. Since the demise of her marriage to Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman has been revealed as an actress with breathtaking talent. The past two years have seen her appear in a series of diverse roles, from Moulin Rouge! to Birthday Girl and The Others . Her latest is The Hours, an adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, in which she stars alongside Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. The movie, the second from ex-Royal Court director Stephen Daldry, is a hymn to complicated femininity and a moving exploration of depression centred on a day in the lives of three women, the linking device provided by their individual connections to Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. Kidman's Golden Globe-winning performance as the suicidal writer is astonishing. What was it, I wondered, about Woolf that had attracted her? 'Her honesty. Her perceptiveness? The way in which she was so embracing of the complications of life. And who we are, what we are, why. She just has a very, very clear voice, Virginia. Which is interesting because her psyche was so complicated? What she was grappling with was so complicated.' Kidman herself appears to have uncovered hidden depths as her career has undergone a renaissance. She first gained attention as the prim and proper head girl in John Duigan's endearing Flirting. Striding purposefully a few feet ahead of a shuffling entourage of schoolgirls, head held high, Kidman looked like a girl with a future. She says of the character now: 'I loved that she appears to be one thing and yet she's really got this quite gorgeous inner life. She has this strict morality about her and then she sort of shakes that off, which I also quite like.' A description that could easily be describing Kidman post-Cruise. Flirting was to be the last movie the budding actress made in her native Australia. Already a minor star Down Under, her life changed dramatically when she was cast opposite Cruise in Days of Thunder. At the ripe age of 22, she found herself catapulted to the dizzy heights of superstardom as the wife of Hollywood's highest earner. 'I basically spent from 22 onwards in a very, very insular environment. And that's all I knew.' Perhaps partly as a result of the cloak of privacy they drew around their marriage, the couple suffered relentless scrutiny by the world's press. The rumours and speculation were further fuelled by Cruise's relationship with Scientology. All that Catholic-raised Kidman will say these days about her own relationship to the cult religion is: 'I'm not a Scientologist.' Most popular of all was the allegation that Nicole had married Tom for her career. If that was the case, it didn't work. The initial promise of this feisty Australian redhead was subsumed by the role of being Mrs Tom Cruise. Kidman puts it down to an arrangement they made early on. 'It was a thing at 22 where I was just going, "I don't want to live my life in hotel rooms without you." It's that simple. I'd rather not work than go through six months of being on the phone, trying to make it OK.' Strange sentiments if the marriage really was based on ambition. Next day, at lunch with a friend and agent to the stars, I'm told a story which again makes the talk of a sham marriage appear like sham gossip. My friend recalls a night where he joined Mike Figgis and Kidman at a bar where they were discussing a project. During the meeting, where the three were downing tequila slammers (Kidman's drug of choice), Cruise calls to say he's on his way. Time passes and he doesn't arrive. He calls his wife and she in turn explains that he's been in a bit of an accident, but will be with them shortly. Cruise finally appears in the doorway of the bar, drenched from the rain in leather pants and a now translucent frilly shirt (it was the early 90s). He strides over, kisses his wife, and proceeds to explain the delay. It seems that while driving to meet them he's spotted a hit-and-run victim. He gets out and checks her condition and then calls the nearest hospital. They ask his name, but when he tells them it's Tom Cruise, they chastise him for being a time-waster and put the phone down. Three further calls elicit the same response. Finally, Cruise loads the woman into his car and delivers her to the hospital, then continues to meet his wife. As my friend tells me the story, I'm thinking, no wonder - as Kidman has asserted over the past 12 years - she fell head over heels. Divorce from Tom Cruise may have broken her heart, but ironically it seems to have made her career. I'm convinced it's no coincidence that the only role she felt capable of playing in the year following the split was that of Virginia Woolf. A woman fighting a daily battle between love and personal demons who is eventually dragged underwater by the current. Kidman speaks of her relationship with Cruise as one she 'desperately wanted to keep intact'; the demise of which made her 'very, very frightened'. 'When it ended, it felt like the end of my life, really,' she tells me. 'I'm sure many women who go through divorce feel the same. It's a black, black hole.' At times she was so paralysed by sadness she was incapable of anything but curling foetus-like on the floor. I ask her how she rallied around. She parries with a question: 'What makes a child view something as a mountain instead of a molehill? Some children are crushed by adversity, for others it ignites them.' I wonder if she's referring to her own childhood or her experience as a mother? The relationship with Cruise may be over, but they still share responsibility for raising their two adopted children Isabella, 10, and Connor, 8. Kidman describes herself as a 'single mother', but I think it's a turn of phrase rather than an indication of Cruise's input. She calls me the day after our interview to say that she's giving the Vanity Fair party, where we had a tentative arrangement to meet, a miss. Instead, she's spending the day with her kids. In five days they're off to New Zealand to see their father for a month and she's keen to savour every moment. 'I'm fiercely protective of them. They're like, "Can we come to the Golden Globes" or whatever, and I always say "No". I feel bad saying it, but then I'll set up a little party at home where they can bring some friends over. It's so important to me to create a life for them that's removed from all this. My daughter and son will be greatly defined by how I behave now and that's an important responsibility.' Kidman is deadly serious about two things, her children and her career. 'She has hit her stride,' says Anthony Minghella, her director in the upcoming film-adaptation of Cold Mountain, a civil-war epic shot in Romania at the end of last year in which she plays the heroine, Ada. 'Film after film she's demonstrating two things. That she has impeccable taste in what she chooses and that each time you think she's found the character she's best at, she tricks you with the next one.' Now with her Golden Globe and an Academy nomination around the corner, she appears to be at the peak of her acting powers. Stephen Daldry begs to differ: 'I think she's only just getting there. There's a lot more to come from Nicole Kidman. I think she'll be surprising us for years.' Kidman is already feeling the pressure of time. 'The God's honest truth is, as a woman, you don't have an enormous career ahead of you. You have a certain time when it's very, very productive and then it's impossible to get work.' She's making the most of her moment, but it's also clear that she adores her chosen profession. Even her description of the job is filmic. 'I love seeing the cinematographer and the crew and everyone's working, quick, quick, the light's going, we've got to work, and you see people running and moving fast and everything to get that shot. I suppose it's something to do with a group of people who are working together to make something. But what is it? It's a picture on celluloid. There's something so unusual and surreal and beautiful about that.' Just as you think she's taking a tumble into the luvvie abyss, she saves herself with a comment like: 'I always think that once you start talking about yourself in the third person you may as well just check yourself into the clinic.' Neither does Kidman's attraction to the romance of the movies stop her from being a hard taskmaster, as Minghella discovered. 'She sets the bar very high for herself and everyone else. The volume is turned up in every sense. It's exhilarating. She is both oddly detached from the business and extraordinarily aware. Here in Los Angeles where most actors' awareness is contained within the boundaries of this city, her awareness is absolutely global.' Even in this city, famous for it's supernovas, Kidman can't help but stand out from the crowd. Dressed in pale lilac, like a fading bruise, she strikes an ephemeral presence. When she walks into the enormous star-studded dining-room that houses the Golden Globe awards every eye is on her - drifting through the gathering like a butterfly blown off course. Daldry admits to feeling 'an insane need to protect her'. I'm not convinced she needs anyone's help. As the evening progresses, she works the room like a politician. My agent friend told me the day before that 'one handshake can make the difference between an Oscar and early retirement'. Kidman's statuette should be guaranteed. Throughout the long three-hour ceremony, Kidman mingles, shakes hands and shares platitudes with Academy members. A fellow guest at the event, who has known the actress since her arrival in Hollywood, leaps at the chance to tell me that 'the role that's come closest to her true character is To Die For '. It isn't meant as a compliment. Gus Van Sant's 1995 black comedy saw her playing an ambitious TV reporter who'll do anything to break out of her small-town life, including murder her spouse. I'm unconvinced of Kidman's 'killer instinct', but you could certainly draw parallels. At that time she was immersed in a protective marriage which left her little room to express herself artistically. 'It was actually a very old-fashioned marriage when I look at it now,' she says. 'Very linear, very traditional.' Perhaps there were echoes in the choice of role of her own nagging desire for freedom? It's a game you can play with all her recent screen excursions. In Moulin Rouge! she sacrifices all for love. In Birthday Girl she dresses to kill and plays a mail-order bride. The Others sees her as a terrified mother, battling to protect her children, and finally there's The Hours in which her marriage can't save her from self-destruction. All four were released following the announcement of her divorce. 'Part of being an actor is staying very, very open emotionally. I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve. There's intensity to the way I react to things, which I suppose gets put into my work. That's the way I let it out because I don't have a partner.' Daldry concurs: 'She was certainly very emotionally vulnerable.' Perhaps as a result, Kidman's mother has said in the past that she isn't keen on her daughter's choice of profession. 'She thinks it's too brutal in terms of a career. I think she'd much prefer it if I'd write, and take a slightly quieter path.' If her latest role in Cold Mountain is an indication of her daughter's state of mind, perhaps her mother can finally relax. According to Minghella: 'Nicole's been very good at creating an inner life which suggests bleakness, melancholy and a kind of psychological fragility. In Cold Mountain , her character Ada's inner life is about an enormously robust, indefatigable human being. A survivor who adapts and changes.' Auditioning her, Minghella was touched when Kidman volunteered that she could play the piano. 'I was just so moved that she felt that the thing that would get her this part was some coincidence of skills with her character's.' Having started, it's hard to stop seeing parallels. After two years of soul searching, Kidman certainly oozes the confidence of a woman in her prime. Over the course of the weekend, I watch as she flits between the roles of film-star professional and mother-of-two, dragging a gaggle of friends and colleagues in her wake. I'm reminded of a released prisoner who is now determined to make up for lost time. 'I think part of the hunger for life and the need for exploring every possible experience is that it feels new to her,' says Daldry. I ask Kidman where home is? 'Is there home, home?' she screws up her face and pauses to think: 'My children. I feel very gypsy. I love that I can fly off and make a film in New York. I loved being in Sweden [where she spent two making Dogville with Lars von Trier] and then in Romania. I think it's to do with restlessness.' Earlier, she had described her teenage years. 'I remember a lot of my childhood being full of yearning - yearning for more, yearning for love.' It seems that she's come full circle. Her impatience, her consuming passion for life, oozes from each perfectly powdered pore. 'You have to be constantly searching. It's rare to feel satiated. But then how important is satiated? Isn't it the living? Isn't it the existing and finding and longing?' Virginia wouldn't have put it any differently. As the interview draws to a close, we make arrangements to meet over the weekend. 'Don't leave me behind,' she says, heading for the door. 'Don't leave me behind,' she repeats, her voice fading down the corridor. I don't know what she's worried about. With Nicole Kidman, the problem these days is trying to keep up.