They Really Can Relate

Helen Mirren and Nicole Kidman haven’t met before this moment--the afternoon after the Academy Awards’ nominee luncheon earlier this month. This is a blind date, at the behest of the Los Angeles Times, but that doesn’t stop the pair from gabbing, about the actor’s life, everything from hemorrhaging vocal cords and stage fright, to the idiosyncrasies of directors and the actresses’ mutual love of Vegemite, a distinctly non-American affection for yeast extract.

Mirren, most famous for her role as Detective Inspector Jane Tennison in the British TV series “Prime Suspect,” arrived in sleek black pants and a black sweater. At 56, she’s trim and petite and half a foot shorter than the 34-year old Kidman, who is at once ethereal and vaguely saucy in a frothy cream-colored slip she found in a flea market and turned into a dress.

Mirren has been nominated as best supporting actress for her role as the steely chief housekeeper in Robert Altman’s “Upstairs Downstairs”-style murder-mystery “Gosford Park,” while Kidman earned her best actress nomination for her portrayal of the doomed courtesan Satine in Baz Luhrmann’s extravagant musical “Moulin Rouge.” It’s hard to imagine two more disparate performances, but together, they exemplify almost the complete range of the female experience, from Kidman’s sassy exhibitionism, with its undercurrent of vulnerability, to Mirren’s self-abnegating stoicism, a muted passion play rendered in a thousand shades of gray.

The two have appeared on both stage and screen.

Helen Mirren: People often ask me, which is your favorite thing, theater or film? And, I would say, which is the absolute truth, the one that I don’t happen to be doing at the time.

Nicole Kidman: Yeah [laughing].

Mirren: And it all has to do with sleep. When you’re doing theater, you think, oh, film is so easy by comparison, and then when you’re doing film, you think, if I didn’t have to get up early in the morning, wouldn’t it be so wonderful? Did you enjoy the theater?

Kidman [who appeared in the “The Blue Room” in London and New York in 1998]: Oh, I loved it, but I lost my voice in the last week, which was harrowing.

Mirren: I just lost my voice in “Dance of Death” [recently on Broadway]. I had to take two shows off.

Kidman: I had to take the whole last week. It was devastating. I lost it on the stage, while I was screaming as the character. I had a cold, and I was screaming, and suddenly, it was a surreal moment, gone! The voice was just gone. There was just nothing. And as an actor, it’s the most horrifying thing. Because I then get into the whole panic. I’m like out of Woody Allen, where, oh no, that means it’ll never come back. It means there’s something dreadfully wrong now with my voice.

Mirren: I can imagine. But I was told when I was doing “Dance of Death,” if I went on the stage that night, I was in danger of destroying my voice for good, because it had hemorrhaged.

Kidman: That’s what I had! I’m so glad it happened to someone else. I felt like such a failure.

Mirren: It was mortifying not to do the show.

Kidman: But you have to. I’ve realized the most important thing an actor has is their voice.

Mirren: In fact, it was funny with the little SAG Award (which Mirren won for best supporting actress), they’ve got no mouth. He’s an actor, and he’s got no mouth. That’s a strange decision for them to make. That’s the most important thing to have. And you understand on stage as well how psychological the voice is. Every nuance of insecurity within yourself and fear and everything, how amazingly it comes out in the voice, without you being able to control it at all.

Question: Neither of you are Americans. Do you feel like outsiders in Hollywood?

Mirren: I think Hollywood has always been made up of people from other places.

Kidman: Everyone feels like an outsider. You never feel like you’re in the club. Someone said very interestingly, “When you step foot in Hollywood, you feel like a failure.” For some reason, no matter how successful you’ve been, you always feel like you’re not really good enough.

Mirren: I’m not an actress in Hollywood. I don’t even sort of appear on the radar screen in Hollywood in actress terms. But I am married to an American film director [Taylor Hackford], whose world is Hollywood. So I sort of see it from two different perspectives. I’ve come to respect the industry side of it and how incredibly well-organized it is.

Kidman: How long have you been with Taylor?

Mirren: Well, we were together for 15 or 16 years and then got married, which is a good way to do it.

Kidman: Wow! I’m going to take that advice. I’m very sure.

Mirren: Very sure, and it was time.

Kidman: You did it in Scotland. I was in Britain when you got married, and it was everywhere.

Mirren: Yes, because I never wanted to get married and I’d been quoted very often saying I wasn’t interested in marriage and I wasn’t. I never was.

Kidman: Did he propose a lot?

Mirren: We talked about it but when you’re together that long, it’s not a “will you marry me?” kind of thing. You know you’re going to spend the rest of your life together by then anyway. So we had a four-day wedding for 16 people and ... no ancient aunts, just really good friends and really close family. Anyway, that’s the marriage thing.

Q: How do you prepare for your roles?

Kidman: When I’m working and I see somebody else’s film, I rarely take the film in, but I come up with great ideas during that [time]. It gives me the time to think about my character. I think it’s because you’re sitting alone in a dark space.

Mirren: It’s background while you’re thinking.

Kidman: Yeah, I can actually daydream during the film.

Mirren: I find myself sort of walking around, shopping. I’m not actually shopping, I’m just walking around the shops, often with my lines, and I find that a quick way to learn. So shopping is perfect for thinking. I find, going into a film, is a little bit like going into a nunnery. You’re in this tunnel, and until the film’s done, you’re not really going to come out of it.

Kidman: You have no life.

Mirren: You have no life, and I can’t sort of have lots and lots of fun on the set. I hope I’m reasonably nice on the set, but I can’t socialize, especially on the kind of schedule that I work.

Kidman: The concentration that it takes. I just did this Lars von Trier movie. We had six weeks to shoot the movie.

Q: How was it working on that film?

Kidman: It’s all set on the soundstages. It’s very Brechtian. We don’t use props. We just have this chalk on the ground, where the town exists, and it’s interesting because we wanted to make a film where you take the walls away in society and how you can actually see everybody doing their business as if they were in town. So all the actors had to be there all the time.

Mirren: Oh really, like in “Gosford Park.”

Kidman: The dog in the film is actually the chalk mark, and we all sort of go to pat the dog, but the dog is just a chalk mark. It’s either going to work or it’s going to be a disaster. I was very frightened.

Q: What was so frightening about it?

Kidman: Certain people that I’d run into would tell me stories about him. The Chinese whispers--they can be so detrimental. So, I went there thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m in a bit of a fragile state, and this is probably not the smartest thing to be doing right now,” because the script, it was pretty harrowing. But then I got there, and the first week was rocky, and he said, “I want to take these walks with you in the forest.” And it would snow, and we’d go off into the forest, three or four times a week, and we’d just talk, hold hands, and walk in the forest.

Mirren: I love that.

Kidman: Sounds very like a fairy tale. He had written this film for me. I was in every scene, and that was the journey that we were going to take, and the walks suddenly became as important as the filmmaking.

Mirren: I was just thinking about that relationship between actors and directors. It is really, really misunderstood by the public at large. It’s also misunderstood by lots of directors.

Kidman: That’s so true.

Mirren: The great director just--I mean, what do they do? I’m not sure that I can actually articulate it. But I know it’s something to do with making an environment comfortable enough for you to create within.

Kidman: Steering you, guiding you, prompting you. Altman loves actors, doesn’t he?

Mirren: In a very practical way. He’s not real sentimental about actors. He’s very practical and not a lot of stroking goes on and not a lot of “oh, that was wonderful.”

Kidman: What’s really lovely, off the camera, is the little tiny hand movement that says, “Got it.”

Mirren: If you think they mean it. [Sotto voce, a little play between herself and the presumed director:]

“We’ve got it, Helen.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, yes, love. We’ve got it.”

Kidman: What about “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be able to piece it together.” It’s sort of like you failed me.

Mirren: Bob Balaban, who is one of the producers of “Gosford Park” and also acts in it, and I did a film called “2010,” here in Hollywood. And one day he gave me the most brilliant piece of acting advice. He said film acting is like Zen. He said you aim the arrow and then you let it go, just let it land where it will, because you can’t really control where it’s going to land. You think you’re aiming at the bull’s-eye of the performance but, with film, you never really know, because film is so ...

Kidman: Because they edit it.

Mirren: But also just the thing of film on one’s face. You look at it after and you go, I didn’t know that I did that.

Kidman: Do you watch dailies?

Mirren: No. I can’t handle dailies for that very reason. I’d be obsessive. I’d want to go back and reshoot everything.

Q: In “Moulin Rouge,” you descend from the ceiling on a trapeze. What was it like making that scene?

Kidman: Well, that was sort of one of the cinematic highlights, I think, in my life. I love anything that’s slightly dangerous. So I got to up on this trapeze, with all these men in tuxedos below and Baz calling out things like, “All right men, we want unbridled lust,” and they’d be screaming and cheering and throwing their hats, and I’d be looking down at them from up on the trapeze and I’d go, “Remember this moment.” We were doing a night scene shoot actually, it was 11 o’clock at night, and I called my dad because he loves musicals. I said, “Dad, come out to the set. You’re going to see something kind of fun.” He was in his pajamas, and he got dressed and came out, and he was just so thrilled that he got to see that moment.

Q: Helen, your role in “Gosford Park” is so interior. How do you focus?

Mirren: I love night filming. I love coming to the set at night and there are lights in the sky and everyone else is asleep, especially if it’s out in the country and you see the lights through the trees. It’s so sort of extraordinary, magical. There are all the caravans and the cables and the lighting truck, and you go down, down, and there’s the set, where all the lights are on, and then there’s the director, then there’s the actor. So the whole process really kind of helps you. Sometimes you can use all the complications and the technical and the hardness of the film set. You can kind of use it; it concentrates down to one blink of a bloody eyelid.

Q: As actresses, both of you have been moving toward more expressiveness.

Kidman: Me more than Helen. You’ve always been more expressive.

Mirren: No, no. For me, the whole constant journey as an actor is the journey toward freedom that I don’t feel I have at all. I feel sometimes like a rabbit paralyzed in the headlights of a car. Maybe, at the end of my career I’ll finally hit it, as all actors do.

Kidman: I’ll tell you, every man I’ve worked with, Helen, every British man. I remember sitting in the rehearsal room for “Blue Room,” and your name came up and they all went, “Oh, she’s so sexy!” All of them, Sam Mendes and Iain Glen, David Hare, they’re like, “She’s hot!” Isn’t that nice?

Mirren: That’s not true. They’re lying.

Kidman: I was there. I was listening to it, and that was just to name a few .

Mirren: It’s nice, actually. It’s great.

Kidman: They’re going to kill me. They’ll be embarrassed.

Mirren: My great inspiration for film acting is of babies and dogs, because if there’s a scene with a baby in it, I cannot take my eyes off the baby. It doesn’t matter who’s in the scene with the baby. It could be the most brilliant, inspiring, fabulous actor/actress ever, but my eyes will be glued to the baby because there’s something just so free, magical, innocent, alive, and no actor can compare with that. And the same with dogs. They just have this absolute purity of expression.

Q (to Nicole): It seems as if “To Die For” was the beginning of a transformation for you.

Kidman: “To Die For,” and then I did “Portrait of a Lady” straight after it. Jane Campion I would credit with just kind of saying to me, “Go into yourself and give from your soul.” Once you feel vulnerable enough, then you sort of go [breathing out], “Uuh.” I try to do it now, very early on in the rehearsal period, so I feel really, really exposed and vulnerable and insecure. And then it’s kind of like, “OK, [the director] kind of sees me.” You either connect or you don’t connect.

Mirren: The sooner you do it the better.

Kidman: Yeah, but I’m one of the worst table readers. Are you good at a table read? Yes, you would be.

Mirren: No, I don’t think I am because I’m very lazy, and I hardly ever read a script all the way to the end.

Q: How do you decide to do a movie or not?

Mirren: Well, I already read the script backward. I jump to the end and then I go back if it’s good enough. But I look to see if my character is on the last page. If it’s on the last page, it means it’s a good role, in general.

Kidman: That’s funny! I’m going to do that.

Mirren: And if it’s not on the last page, I see the last time it appears in the script, and if that’s a really good scene, best of all if she dies, that’s excellent.

Kidman: Then you would have liked “Moulin Rouge.”

Mirren: “Moulin Rouge”--I’d go for that role, definitely, sign me up. I wouldn’t have to read it.

Q: What is the biggest misconception that directors have about you?

Mirren: I think it’s that I’m tough and intelligent. Two great mistakes. I’m not tough and I’m not intelligent [lots of laughter from both women].

Kidman: In the last year, personally, I’ve been exposed in a very raw way, which has been strange for me. I’m at a crossroads now, so I wouldn’t have a clue how I’m viewed or not viewed because I feel really vulnerable. It’s a very strange feeling to have when you’re going through such a public display, and I don’t mean just in terms of my personal life or my divorce [from actor Tom Cruise], but even being nominated for an Oscar at this stage of my career. All the things that have happened have happened in such a small period of time and so intensely.

I get a lot of people saying to me, “We’re worried about you because you seem very fragile.” That’s not just my mother. I suppose in some ways your fragility is the thing you protect, but you also don’t want to lose it. So much of your work is saying, I’m willing to be exposed, and I’m willing to be manipulated, and I’m willing to display these emotions on screen, and I’m going to give them to a Baz Luhrmann or a Lars von Trier, or an Alejandro Amenabar [“The Others”], and I’m going to let him do with them what he’s going to do.

Q (to Kidman): This year was such a breakthrough. How did it happen?

Kidman: I don’t know. I just think in some ways being forced into such a vulnerable position made me open up. Through my whole decade of life with Tom, he was such a huge force and I was willing to not be. And I didn’t want to be. Women in their 30s suddenly say, “I have to define myself” and I want to also not have barriers between me and other people. I like to be who I am. I have no other way of explaining it. I just happened to have two films with two interesting directors, particularly with Baz who basically held my hand through the whole year.

He was my life force. He took me under his wing. Some people have boyfriends. I have directors coming into my life.

Q: I saw you at the Golden Globes, and you seemed very nervous.

Kidman: Actually, in Cannes, I had one of those things where you get panicky and you start to shake. I never had that happen to that extreme. It’s really embarrassing, but all the emotions gets heightened.

Mirren: Especially at Cannes. Cannes is an absolute madhouse, isn’t it?

Kidman: Yeah, and the Academy Awards were [big], but I always went with Tom, and I always would grab his arm, and he’s very calm and collected at those things, and I would hold onto him like a rock. Anyway, [I’ve got] my sister. My sister’s my rock. You’ve got Taylor. You need a rock.

Mirren: You need a rock, absolutely, someone you can hold onto. It’s definitely a good idea.

*

Rachel Abramowitz is a Times staff writer.