More Honors For Nicole?

Nicole Kidman won an Oscar earlier this year for her performance in "The Hours."

Now, there may be another nomination in her future for her latest film, "Cold Mountain." There's also a good chance that she may be competing against one of her closest friends, actress Naomi Watts, who stars in "21 Grams." That's just one of the things Kidman recently spoke about with Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

She says, "It's amazing. It's amazing because Russell Crowe and all of us who knew each other in Sydney, Australia, are now somehow working in this industry. You realize how small the world is. We've all grown up together. It's very strange. We all went to teenage parties."

Kidman says she met Watts while modeling. She says, "We were school girls. I was modeling so I could pay for my acting class and so that's how we met. Also, she dated my sister's boyfriend."

In "Cold Mountain," Kidman plays Ada Monroe, a sheltered Southern belle, who must learn how to survive while awaiting her true love's return from the Civil War. And for her portrayal, she received a Golden Globe nomination.

Kidman told Smith she read the book several years ago and suggested her then husband Tom Cruise should be in it. He actually said Kidman should play Ada. Asked how she approached her role, Kidman explained, "Basically, what you do as an actor is you absorb emotionally who the person is and you then try to exist as the person."

And in her films, the characters do come alive, Smith noted.

Kidman said, "I suppose it's the thing that keeps me going back, I love to play characters. I mean, I'm not good at playing myself," and jokingly added, "Because I don't know who I am.

"But, no, really, that is the hardest thing. I had such admiration for people who can stand up and just get by on pure charisma, because I certainly don't have that."

Modestly, she continued, "It's not my forte of standing up. It's why I'm not good at speeches. There is a shyness there."

Kidman said her struggles with lack of confidence push her to try to be better in what she does. "Probably my huge inner conflict is I don't ever feel like I've done terribly good," she said.

But now that she has an Academy Award under her belt, she said, she can tell her family confidently that acting was what she was meant to do.

She said, "I mean, I come from a family where there is no actors in the family and so it was a really big decision. My parents have always thought, 'You're too fragile and vulnerable for this industry.' My mother always keeps going, 'Well, that's enough now. You can move on into something else.' So in that sense, to have them there and to have my dad and they've been through a lot having a daughter as an actor.

" It's a lot, you know? You're exposed to the family and particularly as parents, you're protective of your child and I've asked a lot of them just as I've asked a lot of my children, so in that sense, the award was for them."

She told Smith in the same way, her responsibility as a parent is to create a safe world for her kids "where they're protected, where they're not defined by the identity of their parents, but where they actually get to define themselves.

"They didn't ask for this," she says. "They sort of got lumped with it. Then sometimes they're like, 'We want to be in photos.' They're normal kids! 'I want to be on TV.' And I'm like, 'If you choose to go into that arena, then that's what you choose and you got to work for that, but at this stage, you're certainly not going to be exposed like that. There is no benefit.'"

Not only has Kidman been protecting her children, but also her own reputation, suing a tabloid for its reports about her and Jude Law. Kidman notes, "My mother has always said to me, 'You're a role model.' You're not a role model for anybody else other than your two children at this stage. How your son views women and how your daughter grows up as a woman is very much going to be sort of set by how you behave."

As for her love life, not surprisingly she did not disclose much information saying, "That's a very vulnerable position and so you say until I'm married, until I'm actually in a position where I'm absolutely sure, then I'm not going to talk about it."

Kidman has two movies scheduled for release in 2004, "Birth" and "The Stepford Wives." She is also expected to begin filming a movie version of '60s sitcom "Bewitched" in April.

About Nicole Kidman

• Born Nicole Mary Kidman in Honolulu, Hawaii, on June 20, 1967, to a biochemist and psychologist father and an activist nursing instructor mother. Kidman spent her first years living in the Washington, D.C., area. By the time she was 3, she and her parents returned to Australia and settled in conservative, upper-middle-class suburb of Sydney.
• As a toddler, she was enrolled in ballet classes and at age 4 got a taste of theatrical life by stealing the spotlight at her school's Christmas pageant, garnering laughs as a sheep who upstaged the Nativity scene.
• By the age of 10, Kidman had been enrolled in drama school and, four years later, made her first real impression as a frizzy-haired teen in the Australian holiday perennial "Bush Christmas" (1983). By that time, she had become a regular on the TV series "Five Mile Creek", appearing in the show's final 12 episodes.
• In 1985, her profile rose even higher after an award-winning performance in the miniseries "Vietnam," which first teamed her with director John Duigan.
• In 1988, she continued her rise in the comedy "Emerald City," as the girlfriend of a script supervisor (Chris Hayward) who catches the attention of a screenwriter (John Hargreaves).
• The following year, she portrayed a young woman who is duped into becoming a drug smuggler, gets caught, and is imprisoned in the gripping TV drama "Bangkok Hilton." Also in 1989, Kidman broke through to international art-house audiences as the traumatized young wife of a middle-aged doctor (Sam Neill) coping with the accidental death of their only child by embarking on a yachting trip that turns threatening when they rescue a stranger (Billy Zane) in the thriller "Dead Calm."
• In 1990, the actress re-teamed with director John Duigan for "Flirting." By the time the film reached U.S. shores in 1991, Kidman had already become known as the actress who snared superstar Tom Cruise after co-starring with him in the race-car drama "Days of Thunder" (1990).
• In an effort to distance herself a bit from the label of "Mrs. Tom Cruise", Kidman accepted the part of a society girl who gets mixed up with gangsters in the Robert Benton-directed period drama "Billy Bathgate" (1991), holding her own opposite Dustin Hoffman. Unfortunately, the film failed to appeal to audiences and was a box-office failure.
• In 1992, she re-teamed with her husband in the Ron Howard-directed would-be epic "Far and Away," which was also a commercial disappointment.
• In 1993, Kidman appeared as a wife desperate to have a child in "Malice" and the supportive spouse of a dying man in "My Life." And in 1995, she was cast as the love interest to Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne/Batman in the overblown "Batman Forever." Also in 1995, she offered a comic turn as an ambitious weather girl who'll do anything to succeed in the satirical "To Die For."
• In 1996, she starred in Jane Campion's "The Portrait of a Lady" as an idealistic American who marries into European aristocracy for wealth rather than love.
• In 1997, she co-starred with George Clooney in the action thriller "The Peacemaker" and teamed with Sandra Bullock in "Practical Magic" (1998). In an effort to completely overhaul her image and improve her standing in the entertainment business, Kidman returned to the stage, starring opposite Iain Glen in the David Hare play "The Blue Room", first in London and then on Broadway. A loose adaptation of "La Ronde," the play had only the two actors and earned acclaim, but it also generated a bit of controversy over brief nudity.
• Before she undertook the stage role, Kidman had signed on with Cruise to play a couple facing difficulties in their marriage in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999). Filmed over a 14-month period from November 1996 to January 1998, "Eyes Wide Shut" was an erotic-tinged fever dream. After the wife (Kidman) confesses to having a sexual fantasy about another man, the husband (Cruise) embarks on a journey that takes him from one charged situation to another, culminating in an orgy. Kubrick died just after completion of the film, but critics greeted it as they had most of his work - with mixed feelings.
• In 2001, Kidman went to work on back-to-back projects that fully demonstrated her range. In Baz Luhrmann's hyperkinetic "Moulin Rouge!" (2001), Kidman was cast as Satine, a singing and dancing courtesan who falls in love with a penniless writer. And in "The Others" she portrayed a high-strung mother living in isolation during WWII.
• Entertainment Weekly selected her as Entertainer of the Year. Kidman had placed two songs on recording charts around the world, "Come What May", a duet with Ewan McGregor from the "Moulin Rouge!" soundtrack, and "Somethin' Stupid", a remake of the Frank and Nancy Sinatra hit recorded with Robbie Williams. But just as she was ascending professional heights, her personal life appeared to be falling apart. Just after the couple's 10th anniversary, Tom Cruise filed for divorce and a month later, Kidman was reported to have suffered a miscarriage.
• By year's end, the marriage had been dissolved and the assets distributed. Professionally, Kidman continued on a roll. "Birthday Girl," in which she was cast as a Russian mail-order bride, was screened to acclaim at film festivals in Venice, London and Toronto in 2001 and opened theatrically in 2002, just prior to the announcement of the Academy Award nominations, which found Kidman competing in the Best Actress category for "Moulin Rouge!" That same year, Kidman portrayed British author Virginia Woolf in the film adaptation of the award-winning novel "The Hours" (2002) which earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress, as well as a Best Actress win at the Golden Globes (her second trophy in as many years).
• Director Lars von Trier hired her to co-star with veterans Lauren Bacall and Ben Gazzara in "Dogville" to be released in 2004.
• She has two other films scheduled for release in 2004, "Birth" and "The Stepford Wives". She begins filming "Bewitched" with Will Ferrell in April.