With her powerhouse portrayal of journalist Martha Gellhorn who also engaged in a tumultuous marriage as Ernest Hemingway’s third wife, Kidman had the rare opportunity of premiering a movie in Cannes. And before this Oscar winning star (The Hours) showed there is practically nothing she won’t do for her art as the trampy Southern trollop in Precious director Lee Daniel’s first film since that triumph, ‘The Paperboy’, in which she stars opposite Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron and John Cusack. The movie divided critics but everyone seemed to agree Kidman nailed it. Clearly this major movie star is on a roll and now she goes where the interesting parts are now whether it’s the movies, theatre or even television, which in ‘Gellhorn’ gave her one of the roles of a lifetime. When asked whether she was familiar with Martha Gellhorn, Kidman said: “I didn’t even know who she was. Then I started researching her and called director Phil and said ‘I have got to play her.’ And to play her old and looking back. She had that perspective. And the final images of the film are her looking back and on the phone and saying ‘I will pay my own way.’ I had to tell that story. She trail-blazed a lot of female journalists, but also she was a role model for women.” Her next project is shooting a Grace Kelly story with Olivier Dahan. She said: “I’ve been offered to play famous actresses before, but it wasn’t the time for me to do that. But this has a great script. I know a little about Grace Kelly. I wasn’t a massive obsessed fan of Grace Kelly, but I want to find out who she was and find the truth of that. We start in late fall. But now I don’t do anything. I go on a plane and go back to my family and say ‘Oh I am a normal person after all’.
