The many faces of Nicole Kidman - the actor's 10 best performances ranked, across film and TV

But in many ways, it's these so-called "missteps" that have actually come to define Kidman as an artist. She's fearless in her choices, unafraid to take the big swings her esteemed peers won't, and that's true whether she's schmoozing with Batman, nabbing an Oscar with a fake nose in tow or sharing a bath with the potential 10-year-old reincarnation of her dead husband.

No film is too big or too silly or wildly experimental for Nicole, who works every job like the rent is due and has done for quite some time.

That's where the magic happens. Because, as Kidman's recent run as an AMC ambassador reminds us, that's why we come to the cinema. For magic. And that's something Nicole will always bring.

Even those silly camp ads of hers are more memorable and more instantly iconic than anything that's actually shown once the movie begins. That's just how good she is.

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Too good, in fact. Or at least too good if you're the one who's been asked to rank just 10 of Kidman's best performances. Apologies to Expats, Dead Calm, Destroyer, Practical Magic, The Beguiled, Margot at the Wedding, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and heck, even Batman Forever.

In any other list, you all could have potentially come out on top, but this is Nicole Kidman we're dealing with here. So without further ado…

10. The Others (2001)

With her porcelain skin, statuesque figure and icy blue eyes, it might seem easy for Kidman to embody the perfect woman, or at least a woman obsessed with perfection. Yet it's when the cracks start to show that perfection of a different kind emerges as Kidman utilises her physicality to dig under the surface until grief and agony bleed through.

Perhaps nowhere is that more clear than in The Others, Alejandro Amenábar’s classic ghost story where Kidman visibly frays to the point of madness by the end.

9. The Paperboy (2012)

In The Paperboy, Lee Daniels’s deranged camp masterpiece full of deranged camp things, Kidman is the most camp and deranged thing of them all - her hurricane performance as the sweary vixen Charlotte Bless is a maelstrom of carnal sex and chaos.

This is Kidman at her most fearless, and definitely most pulpy. All the proof you need that the Oscars are cowards for snubbing this daring role entirely.

8. The Hours (2002)

Out of every role Nicole Kidman has ever said yes to, this was always going to be the one most likely to nab her a well-deserved Oscar. Playing a prosthetic-wearing historical figure is a surefire way to sweet-talk the Academy into some recognition, although this isn't to say Kidman was unworthy.

That nose could have fallen off mid-scene, hanging down like an unseemly booger, and Nicole would have still given the powerhouse performance that an artist of Virginia Woolf's stature deserves.

7. Big Little Lies (2017–present)

We could talk about the emotional tightrope Nicole navigates as Celeste Wright, an affluent mother fighting to survive an abusive marriage. We could also talk about the chemistry she shares with one of the best casts ever assembled on TV, one that includes Reese Witherspoon, Zoë Kravitz, Laura Dern and Meryl Streep in some of their best performances ever.

We could even talk about how Kidman transcends the somewhat schlocky, soapy source material to tap into some of her rawest emotion yet on screen.

But no, all we need to actually talk about is that slap. You know, the one where Celeste slapped her mother-in-law so hard that her glasses hit the floor. Where Nicole Kidman slapped Meryl Louise Streep so hard that every gay on the planet actually stopped breathing and had to take time off work to recover.

When the horror of what Celeste has done creeps into Nicole's Emmy-winning eyes, that alone cements a vital spot on this list for Big Little Lies.

6. Rabbit Hole (2010)

It's always easy to love Nicole Kidman, although our love sure was put to the test back in the late noughties. A string of "interesting" choices threatened to dull her shine, including The Invasion, The Interpreter, and The Golden Compass, but as soon as Kidman let go of her "The" streak, a gripping performance in John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole proved that Nicole still had plenty more to give.

Playing a mother who's suddenly lost her child requires complex layers of nuance that few can navigate without leaning into melodrama, but Kidman effortlessly grounds the role of a woman who wants nothing more than the ground to swallow her up entirely.

5. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

It would have been easy for a lesser performer to get lost in the grandeur of Eyes Wide Shut. Not only was it Stanley Kubrick's final film, an erotic masterpiece that was perversely horrifying and arousing in equal measure, it also starred Tom Cruise at the height of his career, or at least the height of his desire to be bold and resist the expectations that come with being Hollywood's biggest star.

Kidman's character isn't even in the film that much, disappearing for a large chunk of time, but when she is on screen, your eyes stay perpetually wide open. Bold, eerie, and almost otherworldly, what Nicole does with her limited time here effectively transformed her career - and the public's idea of what she was even capable of on screen.

4. Dogville (2003)

Fresh off her Oscar win for The Hours and a divorce that went on for years, Kidman tested herself like never before by working with the notoriously difficult Lars von Trier on a film where there was barely any set to speak of.

In this story of Grace, a woman on the run from violent gangsters, Kidman and the rest of the cast were front and centre, their acting laid bare without any of the usual props or stages we're used to seeing them work with.

The result was a searing, harrowing tour de force that proved Nicole was still hungry to push herself, refusing to sit on her laurels in the wake of her extraordinary success in Hollywood.

3. To Die For (1995)

When discussing Nicole Kidman's career, there's before To Die For and after To Die For. That's not to say her work prior to that should be dismissed. The likes of Dead Calm, Malice and Days of Thunder remain vital steps in her journey towards stardom, but it was this, Gus Van Sant's biting media satire, where Kidman proved herself to be the A-list star we'd long known her to be.

Her unsettling take on Suzanne Stone is quite literally to die for, even if the Oscars didn't agree, because who else but Nicole could fuse this weathercaster's sweet naivety with such chilling sociopathic allure?

You can't help but root for Suzanne even as she plots the murder of her nagging husband with the same calculated precision that Kidman herself brings to every movement, every chilling smile that masks such vile intent.

2. Moulin Rouge (2001)

"No laws. No limits. One rule: Never fall in love." This tagline for Moulin Rouge gravely misjudged the power of Nicole Kidman in a red satin dress, because this was the moment an entire generation did indeed fall in love with her all-consuming star power.

Yes, Kidman's Satine evokes many Hollywood legends of yesteryear, everyone from Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo to Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe, but the theatrical glamour and poise Nicole brought here was all her own. In fact, this was the moment she joined all those greats as a legend herself.

1. Birth (2004)

No one was ready for Birth when it was released. No one except Nicole Kidman, that is. After she read the screenplay, Kidman was the one who approached writer/director Jonathan Glazer about playing the lead role, but he was hesitant to say yes because of how famous she was by that point. But as they talked, Glazer realised that no one was better suited to play Anna, a fragile widow who believed her dead husband had been reincarnated in the body of a 10-year-old child.

From beginning to end, this is Kidman's finest work, a masterclass in nuance that blends scepticism, vulnerability and raw unadulterated pain with just a flicker of the eye or a twitch of a finger. This is Nicole in absolute control, that renowned precision of hers used to hypnotic effect.

And nowhere is that more clear than in a two-minute unbroken close-up after Anna first realises her dead husband may have returned. Every thought, every feeling, creeps into her face as Nicole silently cycles through an entire inner monologue using nothing but her eyes and the poise of her face.

Twenty years on, nothing can quite prepare you for the devastating impact of this career-best moment for Kidman in a near-perfect career full of them.

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