Nicole kidman

Nicole Mary Kidman was born on June 20, 1967, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Though she spent the first few years of her life living in the States, Nicole Kidman, along with her parents and baby sister, moved permanently to Sydney, Australia, when she was just 4 years old. Nicole Kidman’s penchant for the theatrical became evident fairly early on, and her inherently graceful nature initially led her to the world of ballet.

It didn’t take long for Nicole Kidman to start dabbling in other stage-centric activities, though it wasn’t until she took on a role as a sheep in a school Christmas pageant that she first developed in interest in acting. As she progressed into her teens, Nicole Kidman devoted virtually all of her spare waking moments to improving her skills as an actress -- to such an extent that she dropped out of high school to pursue a career within the local film scene.

nicole kidman makes her debut
Nicole Kidman was just 16 years old when she landed a small role in the 1983 Australian drama Bush Christmas, which paved the way for her to work steadily over the next several years (in ’83 alone she appeared in three other films). Though she had become a familiar face among Australian viewers, Nicole Kidman was itching to make a similar impact within North America. Her opportunity came in 1989 when she successfully auditioned for a starring role opposite Sam Neill and Billy Zane in the hit thriller Dead Calm, which firmly established her as one of Down Under’s most promising imports.

nicole kidman meets tom cruise

On her very next project, 1990’s racing drama Days of Thunder, Nicole Kidman found herself falling for costar Tom Cruise, and their whirlwind romance culminated with a Christmas Eve marriage later that year. She went on to share the screen with her A-list husband twice more prior to their 2001 divorce in the 1992 Ron Howard drama Far and Away and the 1999 Stanley Kubrick thriller Eyes Wide Shut (the latter is suspected to have played a role in the disintegration of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise’s marriage, as the shoot went on for an arduous three years).
nicole kidman in the others

Though she had spent the 1990s appearing in such box-office hits as 1993’s My Life, 1995’s Batman Forever and 1997’s The Peacemaker, Nicole Kidman’s status as a bankable leading lady didn’t come about until the one-two punch of Moulin Rouge! and The Others in 2001. She followed those hits up with roles in acclaimed dramas like 2002’s The Hours, 2003’s Dogville and 2003’s Cold Mountain, although, in recent years, her box-office appeal has started to falter due to appearances in a string of critical and financial failures (including 2005’s Bewitched and 2007’s The Invasion). Her personal life fared far better during this time, however, as Nicole Kidman’s relationship with country singer Keith Urban led to a marriage and a child.

Once relegated to decorative parts for years and long acknowledged as the wife of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman spent the latter half of the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium earning much-deserved critical respect. Standing a willowy 5'11" and sporting one of Hollywood's most distinctive heads of frizzy red hair, the Australian actress first entered the American mindset with her role opposite Cruise in Days of Thunder (1990), but it wasn't until she starred as a homicidal weather girl in Gus Van Sant's 1995 To Die For that she achieved recognition as a thespian of considerable range and talent.
Though many assume that the heavily-accented Kidman hails from down under, she was actually born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on June 20, 1967, to Australian parents. Her family, who lived on the island because of a research project that employed Kidman's biochemist father, then moved to Washington, D.C. for the next three years. After her father's project reached completion, Nicole and her family -- which also included her RN mother and a younger sister -- harkened back to Aussie country.

Raised in the upper-middle-class Sydney suburb of Longueville for the remainder of the 1970s and well into the eighties, Kidman grew up infused with a love of the arts, particularly dance and theatre. Trained in ballet from the age of three, she made her acting debut in a nativity play at six. By the age of ten, she was studying acting in drama school, and she subsequently trained at the St. Martin's Youth Theatre in Melbourne and at Sydney's Phillip Street Theatre.