Nicole Kidman has posed in a Chanel bikini top for the November cover shoot of Vogue Australia while reflecting on once being told she was too tall to work as an actress.
The 59-year-old Oscar winner wore the bikini top paired with low-slung denim jeans from the French luxury fashion house and a statement gold necklace, styled with tousled wet hair.
In a second outfit from the editorial, the film star appeared in a skater-inspired look featuring a Chanel beanie hat and a matching monochromatic strapless dress while gazing directly into the camera.
Photographed in New York by Lachlan Bailey and styled by Vogue Australia editor-in-chief Christine Centenera, the feature pairs the fashion editorial with an interview in which Kidman is questioned by prominent Australians and screen collaborators, including Baz Luhrmann, Naomi Watts, Margot Robbie and Zoe Saldaña.
Overcoming early doubts about her height
During the interview, Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann asked her: "When you’re young, there’s always a big focus on fitting in. Is there something you viewed as an obstacle in your youth that you’ve since found to be a strength?"
"My height was an obstacle. I was the tallest in the class, taller than all the boys. I couldn’t fulfill being a ballet dancer because I was too tall," Kidman replied.
She explained that the same objection followed her into casting rooms early in her screen career. "Even as an actress, I was told, 'You’re too tall, because you’re taller than the leading man'," she recalled.
Kidman said the dynamic changed once she became the primary name on a call sheet. "And then, suddenly, when you are cast first in something, you’re not too tall; everyone has to adjust around you," she said. "That was kind of amazing when that happened. My whole life, it was just, 'You’re going to be too tall'. But it gave me my fire."
Standing at 5ft 11in, Kidman was married to 5ft 7in actor Tom Cruise for 11 years after meeting on the set of the 1990 racing drama Days of Thunder. She was later married to 5ft 10in country music singer Keith Urban from 2006 until January this year.
Chanel ambassador role and Australian career roots
The Vogue Australia shoot took place as Chanel brought its resort ’27 collection to Australia for the first time. Founded in Paris by Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel in 1910, the luxury house welcomed Kidman back as a global ambassador last year.
Kidman shares a decades-long creative partnership with both Chanel and Luhrmann. The Australian director cast her as cabaret star Satine in the 2001 musical Moulin Rouge!, which brought Kidman her first Academy Award nomination before she won the Best Actress Oscar for The Hours, and later directed her in the 2008 epic Australia. The pair also collaborated in 2004 on a high-profile short film advertisement for Chanel No. 5 perfume.
Born in Honolulu to Australian parents and raised in Sydney, Kidman broke through in Australian film and television during the 1980s, gaining international recognition in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm before building a career across Hollywood features and prestige television drama.
Questions from Naomi Watts and Margot Robbie
The interview also featured exchanges with two of Kidman's fellow Australian actresses. Her longtime friend Naomi Watts, who grew up alongside Kidman in Sydney and co-starred with her in the 1991 Australian coming-of-age film Flirting, asked: "What rule have you broken before?"
Kidman declined to share specifics on the record. "She knows them! I’m not answering. Many. Rule breaker. It takes one to know one!" she answered.
Barbie star Margot Robbie, who previously appeared alongside Kidman in the 2019 drama Bombshell, asked: "What’s your favourite Aussie TV ad from the past?"
Kidman revealed that her childhood screen ambition centred on fast-food commercials rather than cinema. "Well, I always wanted to be in a McDonald’s commercial. When I was growing up, McDonald’s was it," she said. "Forget about acting, I want to be in a McDonald’s commercial, because I want to be able to eat the Quarter Pounder on camera over and over again. I never got cast."
Balancing motherhood with an acting career
Actress Zoe Saldaña, who stars opposite Kidman and serves as an executive producer alongside her on the spy thriller series Special Ops: Lioness, asked how she manages the demands of family life and film sets.
"You’ve built one of the most fearless careers in our industry while raising a family, and you’ve never seemed to treat those as competing lives," Saldaña asked. "Is there a secret to being 100 per cent mother and 100 per cent artist, or have we all just agreed to be bad at math?"
Kidman responded that she does not aim for flawlessness in either role. "There’s no such thing as perfection in any area. You do your best and you show up, and in each thing you go, 'I’m never going to be perfect at this, but I’m going to give it my best, best shot to do the best I can'," she said.
The actress, who raised two adopted children during her marriage to Cruise and shares two daughters, Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret, with Urban, added that her children remain accessible to her even when cameras are rolling. "As I always say to my daughters, if push came to shove, that all goes out the window. There is nothing more important than you. That is so important for a child to hear," she said.
"They know it, because they can call the set and if I’m in the middle of something, if they need me, they’ve got me," Kidman added. "To know that you are absolutely the priority, that you will never, ever not be put first when it’s really needed, for me, that’s love."
The November issue of Vogue Australia goes on sale on Monday, 2 November.
