Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An Australian actress who rose to fame in TV series Vietnam, then films Dead Calm, To Die For, Portrait of a Lady, and play The Blue Room.
On the island
Eight records
Song to the Moon (from Rusalka)
Amanda Roocroft, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst
This I chose because my mother introduced me to opera when I was very young. And she's always been a big influence in my life anyway. We're very close family. This is Rasolka and it's about I just love the story. It's about a water sprite who actually makes a bargain with a witch and loses her tongue. So she's so she's dumb through two-thirds of the opera, which is a fascinating concept anyway. And it's about yearning, it's about wanting something. And I remember as a teenage girl, my mother playing this to me.
I chose this because my father and my husband both love Elvis, and now I love Elvis, and my father used to sing this song to me, Hush Little Baby.
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Carl Davis
Because my mother was a feminist, she used to make me sing this song around the piano and she would tell me that this was the anthem for the suffragettes. And she loved it when I would stand there at eleven years old and sing this for her.
I think ever since I was a little girl I've listened to music and emotionally it centers me. I mean I use it when I act all the time. Even when I'm travelling on a plane or driving I have music in the pocket of my coat or any so that at any time I can put on a C D or I can put a a tape in if there's the opportunity. So when I met Tom, he would take me out and we'd go driving in the snow and he'd do these spins on the ice and very very much of him and I would sit in the car. But we ended up in this forest with the snow falling one evening. I think it was about two a.m. in the morning. And I happened to have Poetic Champions, the Van Morrison album. And this song, Someone Like You, came on and we both sat there in the snow with the snow falling around the car and we just listened to this song and this has since became our wedding song.
Love Remains (from The Portrait of a Lady)
Jane Campion... Invited me to Prague to listen to the music that had been composed for the film. And there's something so unique about that, to sit there and listen to music that has been composed for you by a great composer. And I remember sat sitting there and I cried because I'd put so much work into the character and I heard somebody else had put so much work and love and care into the character as well.
Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company
I suppose Janice to me as a young girl was it. She she was a woman that lived on the edge. She has a voice that depicts that and you know she died very early and it was very sad but I think her voice is bittersweet and I think as an actor that's something that you search for in characters as as bittersweet characters.
This is a funny one. This was my first audition. I I was at school and I had a a friend who was in commercials and she was She was sort of very um showy, should we say, and she took me she said, Oh, I'm going to audition for this musical Annie, and if you'd like to come with me, it's an open call audition and you could come with me And I thought, Wow, that sounds like fun on a weekend And the only song I knew was the song that we were rehearsing for the school play at the end of the year, and that was one from Chorusline. And they stopped me actually after the first the first few lines and said, Thank you, sweetheart, that was lovely, but don't call us, we'll call you.
What a Wonderful WorldFavourite
This has to be Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World, because I suppose I am I mean, I'm an optimist, even though I ha I fight sometimes a pessimist approach to things. I I am an optimist. I do believe the glass is half full and not half empty.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:22How difficult was it as you went through rehearsals [for The Blue Room]?
No, we didn't do that until previews and it was only then that we shook hands on it. He said, I really feel that the playwright should be walking around naked. And then I said, Well, that means you put me in a position where I can't have. You walking around naked and me standing there with all my clothes on. So, all right, I will do it if you do it, and we shook on it. And we did it in the dress rehearsal for the first time. But we did not do it in the rehearsal room at all. And even when we were rehearsing, instead of kissing for the first two weeks, we just touched hands. Sam didn't want us to kiss. He wanted us just to touch hands so that you would find out who had the power, who was the one that was instigating it first.
Presenter asks
4:10What was it like for your spouses to sit in the auditorium and watch [the explicit scenes]?
Well, luckily we're we are both married, so that put us in a position of being able to it wasn't like one of us was single and then you get into that weird Oh my gosh, is this turning into a pass? Or I mean, because we were both married and we both have children, it was quite upfront. And, you know, we've all spent time together now, the four of us, and we're actually going to be spending Christmas together. It's all very we're all very close. But uh I I think it was uncomfortable, but it's something that you have to deal with when you're an actor.
The keepsakes
The book
Emily Dickinson
I would take some poetry because I love poetry and you can read it over and over again each time it's different. Emily Dickinson.
The luxury
Sunblock, SPF 45. It's a very practical luxury. It's very practical because I am going to get off the island.
Presenter asks
Describe yourself [as a teenager in Australia].
Yes. Oh, well I was five foot ten by the time I was thirteen, which is just awful for a young girl. and um very s skinny, scrawny, I think I would be called. And uh you know, when you in Australia you desire to be curvy and blonde and brown. That's uh so you can go to the beach... And I was tall and skinny and white. With very, very pale, very pale skinny. Very pale. Very, very pale. Claring. So I would be slathered in sort of sunscreen and zinc on my nose and I I would basically look like a freak.
Presenter asks
15:50How much do you think being Mrs. Tom Cruise held up your acting career in a way?
Well, I had a I I had a um a wonderful career in Australia and so I I left that when I met Tom. I left my friends, I left my family, I I left everything. And moved to America, which was something I was not going. I would never have done if I hadn't have fallen in love with him. But. I I don't know how it affected. I think that, you know, when you're very young and you marry a very famous man, your identity does become attuned to hit. Everybody started to think, well, the you know, Tom and Nicole, Tom and Nicole. And so I didn't really have an identity and that was frustrating.
Presenter asks
20:28Is there a dark side to Nicole Kidman?
I think yeah, I think I mean it's something that that you battle, I think... I think in terms of fear, in terms of the way in which you the the things that the stories you're drawn to. But it's something that you keep I mean I choose to keep it very private because and only the people that are very close to me really know me because it's I mean I think it's something that you have to protect and it the way it manifests itself is in your work and in your choices.
Presenter asks
29:35Why did you decide suddenly to take action [against the press]?
Because you t I mean, you turn the other cheek for a long time, you're taught to turn the other cheek. Well, rise above it, sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you. And then when you have children you say, mm this now rumors and now I think because of the Internet and the m the media in general become fact very, very quickly unless you take action. And I didn't want my kids going to school and having to defend us in the schoolyard.
“I'm a grown-up and I've sort of adopted all the same things that they have... sticking to who you are and making choices in your life.”
“I always think of giving up. Why? Because well, it's I find acting quite difficult emotionally because I really throw myself into it. And um when you have children, it then becomes Boy, I want to be there for my children and for my family, and yet I want to give everything I have to this role. And so it really is quite a dilemma.”
“Once I held Bella in my arms, that was the pregnancy, that was everything. You look into those eyes and that crazy love happens. I mean, and it's crazy love because you'll do anything unconditional.”