For the May 2020 issue, W magazine has brought yet another couple photoshoot to feast our eyes on. This time we’re talking about ‘Hemingway and Gellhorn’ co-stars Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen. The movie which is airing next month was the perfect ice breaker for the two stars who recalled their beginnings as actors. Clive found his calling at the age of 13: I played the Artful Dodger in Oliver! when I was about 13. It was the musical version. I didn’t sing that well, but I gave it a go. I was just given the part, thrown into it, and I came out and said, “I have to do this. I’ve got to be an actor.” I was unwavering from that moment on.”
Nicole, on the other hand, always saw movies as a bigger source of inspiration and more precisely: “The Wizard of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the West had the biggest impact on me. When the striped stockings disappeared under the house, I wanted to become an actor.” Still, she wasn’t interested in Dorothy: “I was always interested in the character roles. I thought the witch was much more fascinating than Dorothy.”
The star admits being highly influenced by her mother throughout her career: “She always believed in me, but she’s tough on me too. She’s lived a life where she made a lot of compromises. She would have loved to be a doctor, but she didn’t come from the generation of women where she could go and be a doctor. She became a nurse instead. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a nurse, but she wanted to be a doctor. Until I won the Academy Award [for The Hours], I was kind of pursuing things to please her. I’ve really tried to sever that.”
Talking about the newest project she tackled, Nicole states that it was her character’s ambition and the character’s evolution which convinced her to take the role: “I knew nothing about Martha [Gellhorn], but I’ve always been drawn to unique women who are willing to take on the world. The exciting thing about this film is that you see her discovering her nature. At the beginning, she’s a lot of talk. She knows that she’s either got to get her hands dirty and become what she pretends to be or she’s a fraud. In the end, Gellhorn out-Hemingways Hemingway.”
Getting to the hot scenes of the newest project, Clive states sex scenes are a lot easier than dying scenes: “It’s much harder to do a death scene. You’ve got to do it convincingly, and it’s a huge thing to die [laughs]. Sex scenes are only hard if there’s no narrative conveyed through the sex scene. In the Hemingway film, the sex scenes have a story going through them. It’s part of who these people are and what they are.”
Asked about her views regarding nudity, the actress reveals her professionalism: “I don’t mind being naked. Maybe as I get older, and now after having had a baby, it might be different, but I enjoy not letting my issues get in the way of a performance. Once I start putting all my little insecurities in my mind, I’m not actually acting. Then it’s about me—and it should never be about me. It should be about the character.”
The actress also opened up about her husband’s throat surgery and how it influenced their relationship: “Three weeks of no sound—no laughing, no coughing, no sneezing, nothing. He could write things down, and he would scribble away. You can still fight when someone can’t talk. When he disagreed with me, he would write, “This is unacceptable.[Laughs.] All of those things make you closer. It was sort of profound: to go without his voice, and then to finally hear his voice. What if he sounded different? I was there for his first words, and then we cried. How many people experience their husband’s first words? If that doesn’t bring you closer, you’re not breathing.”
Read the entire interview in the magazine which hits the newsstands on April 24.
Photo courtesy of W Magazine