W
hen Nicole Kidman accepted her best actress Golden Globe award for her role as Celeste Wright in the hit HBO series Big Little Lies, in her speech she thanked her mother, a nurse who wished she’d been a doctor, for never setting limits on what her daughters could be. “My achievements are her achievements,” declared the actress. Kidman also paid tribute to her female costars Reese Witherspoon, Zoë Kravitz, Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley, saying, “We pledged allegiance to each other and this is ours to share” – and praised “the power of women”. Hollywood has been feeling the power of women in the form of #MeToo and the response to revelations about film mogul Harvey Weinstein’s behaviour – and Big Little Lies, which launched in 2017, was one of the catalysts in that process. The series not only highlighted a liberating shift towards female talent, and a move away from big-budget Hollywood studios towards TV cable and streaming, it also voiced the domestic and sexual violence that can lie under the surface of apparently successful women’s lives. Kidman, who also scooped an Emmy for her role as the abused Celeste, said in her Golden Globes speech, “I do believe and I hope that we can elicit change through the stories we tell and the way we tell them. Let’s keep the conversation alive.” Kidman is personally committed on that score. She has pledged to work with a female director at least every 18 months, to help address the fact that only four per cent of Hollywood movies are made by women. And she does not shy away from roles that open up debate. She took an Oscar for her 2002 portrayal of the troubled Virginia Woolf in The Hours, and followed that up in
T H E
R E V O L U T I O N A R Y
NICOLE K I DMAN A S T H E M U C H -A N T I C I PAT E D R E T U R N O F B I G L I T T L E L I E S D R AW S N E A R , T H E L E A D I N G AC T R E S S FOR CLOSE TO FOUR DECADES, NOW A PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR, DESCRIBES THE POWER OF HER A-LIST SISTERHOOD
Words: Dawn Alford
