Nicole Kidman Nearly Starred In One Of David Fincher's Most Underrated Movies

Australian actress Nicole Kidman began her professional career in 1983 with an appearance in the holiday film "Bush Christmas," and followed it immediately with Brian Trenchard-Smith's very watchable teens-rule actioner "BMX Bandits." She was 16 at the time. Kidman was a striking screen presence, however, and she immediately began a busy career that hasn't slowed since. For six years, Kidman was all over Aussie TV and cinema, with the actress finally breaking into Hollywood in 1989 with her role in the taut thriller "Dead Calm." In 1990, she was cast opposite Tom Cruise in Tony Scott's "Days of Thunder," and her superstar status was cemented. She also began dating Cruise that year, and they married in 1990, staying one of Hollywood's most visible power couples for a decade. 

Kidman was drawn to a great variety of projects, appearing in costume dramas, comedies, FX-based blockbusters, Oscar bait nonsense, and bonkers experiments like "Dogville," "Fur," and "Birth." She seems to be open-minded when it comes to the films she wants to be involved with. 

In 2001, Kidman had an amazing year with the blustery musical "Moulin Rouge!" and the intense horror movie "The Others." She was also about to appear in "The Hours," playing Virginia Woolf, a performance that would win her an Academy Award. It was likely around this time that she was being offered piles and piles of scripts, and likely had her choice of them. 

One of the many projects she was working on in 2001 was David Fincher's "Panic Room," a film about a home invasion, and the mother-daughter team who have to fight off the infiltrators from within an impregnable locked safe room. Kidman, sadly, had to drop out of the project because of a knee injury she sustained on the set of "Moulin Rouge!" Jodie Foster ultimately stepped in. 

"Panic Room" was the subject of a lot of attention when it came out in 2002. It was the first film Fincher had made after "Fight Club," so the director was already established as a wunderkind worth watching. Also, the screenplay was by David Koepp, the writer behind genre hits like "Jurassic Park," "The Shadow," and "Mission: Impossible," as well as creative sci-fi/horror flicks like "I Come in Peace" and "Death Becomes Her." "Panic Room" also starred Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, and country superstar Dwight Yoakam as the home invaders, so many audiences had taken an interest. She was only 12 at the time, but "Panic Room" also featured Kristen Stewart in one of her earliest, most visible roles. 

The report of Kidman's dropout was covered in a 2002 article from EW. It noted that Kidman was still nursing a knee injury from "Moulin Rouge!" It seems that during the "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" number in Baz Luhrmann's musical, Kidman experienced a nasty fall and tore her cartilage. "Panic Room" required a lot of running and crawling and physicality, and Kidman still wasn't in a position to do it. EW suggested that she be replaced by Angelina Jolie. 

In May 2024, Kidman and Jodie Foster spoke to the Hollywood Reporter about "Panic Room," and that Kidman was relieved that Foster ultimately stepped in to take the role. Foster brought the film up as an illustration that Hollywood actresses tend to have each other's backs a lot, and that there aren't fierce rivalries as one might assume. Foster mentioned she stepped into an unnamed film that Kidman had left, and Kidman was nothing but happy to acknowledge that. She said: 

"Yes! And thank you. I was in a really bad way. I was like, 'I'm having a breakdown.' And Jodie took over, thank the Lord."

Foster did an exemplary job, and Kidman moved onto "The Hours." It seems everything worked out.