Nicole Kidman Felt Embarrassed By Her Performance In A Historical Epic

It's almost impossible for an actor to be proud of every single thing they've ever made, even when they're the caliber of Academy Award-winner Nicole Kidman. Over the years, the Australian performer has starred in all kinds of films, from Baz Luhrmann's romantic and tragic musical "Moulin Rouge!" to Alejandro Amenábar's truly terrifying ghost story "The Others, but one in particular apparently gives her pause in retrospect. 

In an interview with the Australian radio station 2dayFM (via The Daily Mail), Kidman revealed that she was embarrassed when she saw her performance in Luhrmann's 2008 historical epic "Australia." The movie received middling-to-poor reviews from critics and wasn't especially loved by audiences either, and Kidman's starring role as British aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley, who moves to Australia after she inherits the cattle ranch Faraway Downs, doesn't really help matters. Her performance isn't the worst thing about the movie, of course, as the whole thing is a sort of wrong-headed fever dream composed of ideas from other movies, but it's hard to blame her for feeling a bit ashamed of the whole thing. 

In the interview, Kidman explained that she "squirmed in her seat" at the premiere of the movie and even asked her then-boyfriend (now her husband) Keith Urban if she was truly as terrible in the movie as she felt: 

"I sat there and I looked at Keith and went 'Am I any good in this movie?' But I thought Brandon Walters (an 11-year-old Aboriginal boy) and Hugh Jackman were wonderful. [...] It's just impossible for me to connect to it emotionally at all."

"Australia" follows Kidman's character as she falls in love with Hugh Jackman's Drover character, who helps her on a cattle drive across the outback. The whole thing takes place during World War II and is sort of like an Australian "Gone with the Wind" assembled from parts of a dozen other movies (it's almost fun to watch just to see if you can pick apart where Luhrmann got all of his ideas), and it's overlong, overwrought, and just rather overdone in general. For some baffling reason, Luhrmann decided to use unused footage from the film to extend it into a miniseries for Hulu, "Faraway Downs," as if it wasn't long enough to begin with. 

Kidman's right about one thing — Jackman is charming (as always), and Walters is great, too, although he hasn't been in much since and has sadly faced some legal troubles in adulthood. Fans curious to see if Kidman's performance is really all that terrible can check out both "Faraway Downs" and "Australia" on Hulu or Disney+, depending on region, though that's a lot of time to dedicate to one of cinema's biggest whiffs.