2011 Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Intervista a Nic:

Stunning Nicole Kidman electrifies Santa Barbara's Arlington Theatre
By MICHAEL BOWKER -- FEB. 6, 2011

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival continued to enjoy overwhelming support Saturday night as more than 2,000 people crowded into the Arlington Theatre to see Nicole Kidman, who was receiving the festival’s Cinema Vanguard Award. The award is presented annually by the SBIFF to actors showing a willingness to take risks in the roles they chose.

Kidman has taken those risks throughout her career, including her role as a grief-stricken mother and wife in the current film, Rabbit Hole.

Kidman took her time outside the theater, enjoying the crowd. “The first time I took a real risk was when I was 17,” said the Hawaian-born actor, who was raised in Sydney, Australia. “I just took off and backpacked around Europe. I am a great believer in saying ‘why not’ rather than ‘I can’t do it’.”

During the ceremony, Kidman talked for more than an hour with SBIFF Executive Director, Roger Durling. “The more complicated you are allowed to be the better you become,” Durling gushed at one point.

Kidman, who typically plays edgy, sometimes hardened characters, was anything but as she clearly had fun answering the questions.

“Life is contrasts,” she told the overflow crowd. “To appreciate something you have, you have to have been in a place without that thing. That’s why, even though I am happy in my personal life, I chose to take on the character in Rabbit Hole, who was suffering so deeply.” In the film, Kidman’s character loses a son to an accident and struggles with the emotional aftermath. “We have to keep our art dangerous,” she said.

Also honored during the evening were four films, including Light in Darkness, Face to Face, Michael Rymer director, Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist, Peter Brown, director/producer and Finding Kind, Lauren Parsekian, director and Molly Stroud, producer.

Kidman has acted in a variety of commercially successful films, such as Batman Forever, Peacemaker, The Invasion, Malice and the Stepford Wives, but many of her roles and the films she chooses are off the beaten path. Films like Fur, Dead Calm, Dogville, The Human Stain and others left some movie goers shaking their heads and others cheering her willingness to take risks. Even Moulin Rouge! was considered a risk because musicals were out of style in 2001, when the film was released.

Kidman, 43, still loves to skydive and act in theater. In 1990, she also married actor Tom Cruise which some observers feel may have been her biggest risk of all. After her 2001 divorce, she married country singer, Keith Urban in 2006, and they maintain homes in Los Angeles, Nashville and Sydney.

Kidman hopes to star in The Danish Girl, a film adaptation of the novel by the same name. She will play Einar Wegener, the world’s first post-op transsexual.

“I’ve wanted to be an actor since I was small, which is embarrassing because I wish I had wanted to be a doctor or a scientist,” said Kidman. “But, in truth, I always wanted to be an actor.”

The Film Festival is slated to end tonight at the Arlington with the premiere of Georges Bizet’s popular opera Carmen in 3D, directed by Julian Napier. The event will mark the first time ever that an opera has been filmed and shown in state-of-the-art digital 3D. The start time will be earlier than normal, the red carpet arrivals begin at 5 p.m. and the show seating begins at 6 p.m.

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