Nicole Kidman is now a star in cinema and streaming

"Dream a little dream of me," sings Nicole Kidman in the opening credits. A sweet song, already 95 years old, the most famous version is by the flower power quartet Mamas & Papas. It's about the lightheartedness of love. In the series "The Undoing" (2020), however, the song takes on a second meaning: "Just dream me up – in reality, I'm someone completely different."

"The Undoing" is about psychotherapist Grace Fraser, played by Kidman, her husband, pediatric oncologist Jonathan (Hugh Grant), and their son Henry (Noah Jupe), who attends an elite school. A perfect family, a close-knit unit, a dream apartment on the Upper East Side. Then someone dies, Jonathan is gone, and the cancer conference he wanted to attend is a complete fabrication.

Showrunner David E. Kelley ("Big Little Lies") and Danish director Susanne Bier ("The Night Manager") created a captivating series about love, trust, death, and lies. Hugh Grant blinked innocently, as if he were still Nettling from "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1989). But Nicole Kidman had a fear in her eyes that no one else can. Her world shatters—her mouth smiles, but her eyes scream. A double face.

The thriller, with its red herrings and impossible killer, became a hit. It was the series that made it clear that television wasn't just a foray for film actress Kidman, that she would make it her second stage, one on par with cinema. "I don't want the light stuff," she said at the time. "I like it when things get heavy, fast."

She had already discovered the allure of the small screen three years earlier. In the second season of Jane Campion's thriller series "Top of the Lake," she played an adoptive mother suspected of murder. Industry magazine "Variety" called it a "terrific performance."

And in "Big Little Lies" that same year, she played Celeste, a victim of domestic violence. Canadian Jean Marc Vallée ("Dallas Buyers Club"), who died in 2021, directed the film, and it marked the beginning of Kidman's collaboration with "Ally McBeal" creator David E. Kelley, who wrote the screenplay. By the second season, Celeste was missing the blows in her marriage. Heavy.

In the last century, television was a siding for those who were no longer making enough money at the cinema. This particularly affected women, who were expected to radiate youth and beauty in their films. Even Hollywood greats like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn ended up in the less sophisticated "slipper cinema." Since the rise of quality television in the 2000s and streaming services in the 2010s, television has changed fundamentally. It's as powerful as cinema—only more epic.

At the turn of the millennium, Hollywood had hardly any major roles for actresses in their 50s and 60s. Meryl Streep alone seemed to be constantly busy. Now, female stars of advanced age are in demand. The careers of actresses like Julianne Moore, Angelina Jolie, Isabella Rossellini, Halle Berry, Viola Davis, Pamela Anderson, Tilda Swinton, and many others now have unlimited careers.

Angelina Jolie, who turns 50 on June 4, recently enjoyed success as opera diva Maria Callas in Pablo Larrain's "Maria," and Cate Blanchett (56) in Steven Soderbergh's spy film "Black Bag." Demi Moore (62) made a comeback with her leading role in Coralie Fargeat's body horror "The Substance," for which she received her first Golden Globe. Jodie Foster (62) won an Emmy for her leading role in the pitch-black thriller series "True Detective: Night Country."

In March, the British daily newspaper "The Guardian" noted a cultural shift, a destigmatization, and the end of misogynistic age toxicity. Older Hollywood women are lucrative not despite, but because of their age. "Old" is the new "valuable." The ladies are sought after on red carpets and often deliver the best work of their careers.

A young audience today is also interested in exciting older characters, while older people remain moviegoers and don't just want to see teens and twenty-somethings on screen. The Guardian sees Hollywood moving away from the purely male (sexist) gaze. This is progress.

Kidman turns 58 on June 20th and is busier than ever—in both media. The Hawaiian-born Australian (and American), the daughter of a nursing teacher and a biochemist, had wanted to be an actress ever since she saw Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 fairytale film "The Witch and the Wardrobe." In Australia, at just 20 years old, she received the Australian Film Institute Award, the Down Under equivalent of the Oscar, for her leading role in the miniseries "Vietnam," about Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War.

Things didn't get serious in Hollywood until 1995, with the character of the murderous newswoman Suzanne Stone in Gus Van Sant's media satire "To Die For," about the unhealthy addiction to being a star. A manipulative careerist who seduces teenagers (a young Joaquin Phoenix) into sex and convinces them to commit murder—that could have seriously derailed Kidman's career.

After playing the female lead in "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999), Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's "Traumnovelle," Kidman had her pick of roles. US critic James Berardinelli called Kidman's performance "consistently excellent." As Alice, she also fearlessly delivered the "full-frontal nudity" Kubrick wanted to visualize the jealous fantasies of her husband, played by Tom Cruise.

Kidman retained control, and there was an agreement, as she told The New York Times Magazine in 2020: "He would show me the nude scenes before they were included in the film." Kidman had no objections.

Then she sang in Baz Luhrmann's fin-de-siècle musical "Moulin Rouge!" (2001), scared the audience in Alejandro Amenàbar's horror film "The Others" (2001), was exploited and took revenge in the painted streets of Lars von Trier's theater city "Dogville" (2003).

Virginia Woolf became her Oscar-winning role. Fragile, frightened, serious, sensitive, strong, weak, haunted by ghosts, Kidman portrayed writing as an unavoidable balancing act on the edge of madness in Stephen Daldry's "The Hours" (2002).

The film, which also stars Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, begins with a powerful minor key: Virginia Woolf, a genius hunted by voices and author of "Mrs. Dalloway", floats through the ferns of a small river in Sussex like a strange fish that has finally found its element again after a life in a foreign fluid.

Since 2018, she has starred in ten films – from auteur films to blockbusters – and eight television series. The fact that the material is as heavy as Kidman wants, and that the female perspective also dominates, is due to the fact that she has long been active on the controlling side – as a producer who favors female writers and directors. In 2010, she founded her company Blossom Films and participated in the production of, among others, "Big Little Things," "The Undoing," and "Nine Perfect Strangers."

For the second time, she is currently on the streaming service Amazon Prime Video Masha Dmitrichenko, the blonde therapist with the Slavic accent, who greeted her “nine perfect strangers” in the first season (showrunner was again Kelley, the novel was based on Liane Moriarty, as with “Big Little Things”) with the sentence “You all came here to die”.

For a long time, little happened, except that Masha's reliable appearance during patient crises made her ethereal beauty seem spidery. Her feverish, dark gaze, which contradicted her smile and gentle words, gave one the feeling that the strangers' joyful bonding into "something like family" couldn't be all there was to it. Then the chasms widened, and a violent twist revealed a tenth stranger.

Sporting a chic, medium-length hairstyle, this time she delivers her healing promises at the Hotel Zauberwald in the Austrian Alps (a small allusion to Thomas Mann's novel "The Magic Mountain," set in the Swiss Alps), where she has fled primarily from American investigators. Access to this cold realm of dark fir trees, snow, and mystical fog is only possible via a steep mountain railway; cell phones don't work. A perfect hiding place for her.

And at the end of January, Kidman appeared in Halina Reijns' "Babygirl," the story of a successful CEO, seemingly happily married woman, and mother. In reality, Romy lives an unfulfilled life, secretly masturbating to online porn and taking a young intern (Harris Dickinson) as a lover to indulge her sexual fantasies. A female perspective, a female director. Very explicit scenes. Very heavy. "This is a woman's story, and—I hope—a very liberating story," Kidman told Variety.

"Many people become more vulnerable and anxious as they get older. My desire is to continue to throw myself into things," Kidman said during the creation of the first season of "Nine Perfect Strangers."

For example, in the thriller series "Scarpetta," in which she will play forensic scientist Kay Scarpetta, based on the novels by Patricia Cornwell, later this year. And in the third season of "Big Little Lies," on which work is progressing, "fast and furious," as she told Vanity Fair almost a year ago.

A sequel to a cult film is coming to cinemas. Kidman and Sandra Bullock will reprise their roles as Gillian and Sally Owens in "The Witches" (1988) next September (28 years after the first film). Griffin Dunne directed the first film, and Susanne Bier, director of "The Undoing," will take on the role of the older witch sisters. This film, too, will have a more female cast.