It's a new career peak for Nicole by Robin Walker

THERE is no doubting Nicole Kidman’s commitment to her career. Ever since she separated from her husband of ten years, Tom Cruise, three years ago, her star has been in the ascendant. She sang her heart out in Moulin Rouge, had the wits scared from her in The Others, won an Oscar for her performance as Virginia Woolf in The Hours and now is starring in another Oscar contender, Cold Mountain.

Despite all the trials and tribulations in her private life over the past couple of years, Kidman has refused to let up on her workload, churning out eight films in the last two years with another two in post-production which will be released next year and a further four to hit the screens in 2005.

Indeed the 36-year-old Australian has never been busier, yet while she loves what she does - "Being an actress, someone who absolutely loves what she does, I’m dedicated to it," she declares. "It really doesn’t feel like work to me; I see it as something that I have to do," - she still can’t bear to watch her own performances. "They have to drag me by a leash around my neck to get me in to see them," she says, admitting her reaction might be considered by some as "insane". She adds: "But I’m terrible at taking any compliments."

So much so that she didn’t even want to attend the Oscar ceremony where she won best actress, nor does she think she’s worthy of the tribute evening held in her honour by the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles earlier this year. "It was actually a bit embarrassing," she says. "I looked at my work and thought ‘I don’t deserve this, get back to acting class Nicole!’ I was aghast at some of the stuff especially as Sydney Pollack (who’s directing her in The Interpreter) was there, and Anthony Minghella, Stephen Daldry . . . I said to Sydney: ‘you’re going to fire me.’ I thought he was thinking: ‘what have I cast this woman for?’

"I find it difficult to accept praise, partly because I feel I had nothing to do with it. You have no idea how you give a performance. You have no idea how you get the role. It’s all so lucky and fortuitous."

But luck really doesn’t account for her current status - more her hard work, striking performances and of course that Oscar. However, shooting the American Civil War drama Cold Mountain in the freezing, flood-hit wilds of Romania last year - she had to wear heat packs on her face to keep warm - did test her dedication to her craft.

Kidman says of the £47 million production directed by Minghella: "It was a tough shoot - it wasn’t exactly Little House on the Prairie." With a title like Cold Mountain, perhaps this was to be expected. Based on Charles Frazier’s epic novel, Kidman plays Ada, an aristocratic Southern belle who finds herself running a remote farm in the North Carolina mountains with no men around. Renee Zellweger plays a tough rural gal who moves in to help, while Jude Law plays Inman, who is her Confederate soldier love-interest. It was an eye-catching role that fell into her lap, says the actress.

"It fell before me by chance but it’s a story that makes you ache. It evokes a sense of longing, which is hard to do." And she says the part of Ada has been a welcome change after the three dark roles in The Hours, Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, and The Human Stain. "I think I needed it. It was lovely to be making a film about love at this time in my life," she says.

The cuts and bruises that came with playing a 19th-century American woman struggling to build a farm were off-set by the role. "I didn’t notice when I was harming my body. With this story, adversity helps. There’s something about smooth-sailing that wouldn’t sit right."

Her character also goes through a wonderful journey of self-discovery, from corseted beauty to can-do farmer, which appealed to the elegant actress. "At first she’s like a doll, not built to take care of herself, and she makes this huge progression. I also loved the female friendship in this movie."

She adds: "What’s so wonderful about this story is that it is based on these two people needing something and needing to conjure something based on a few captured, fleeting moments that then have to sustain them through the years.

"So, when they meet up again, it’s like ‘who are you? what are you? Is this actually based on nothing or am I going to be able to discover the person whose belief helped me endure?’ If Ada and Inman hadn’t had that faith in their love they wouldn’t have been able to endure the war. So when they come back together . . . and say ‘there’s something here that I can respond to, that is real.’ You can call it love but they’re saying ‘I need you’ and that, I think, is beautiful."

It was a complicated film to get made, with several major changes, including Tom Cruise first being down to play the soldier, then dropping out to be replaced by Law. Minghella says he wanted dedicated professionals who wouldn’t burden a difficult shoot with star demands. "If you’re making a film like Cold Mountain and setting out on a tough journey, you need to pick your companions very carefully," he has said.

In his adaptation of the novel, he builds on Ada’s struggle and Inman’s journey back to her and Cold Mountain. It meant spending months on end replicating the Civil War-era America in Romania (aided by hundreds of soldiers from the Romanian army for battle scenes) but Kidman says that’s just part of the gypsy lifestyle that being an actress necessitates. "I go wherever I need to go to make the film, the play, the work," she says. "It’s about trying to make pieces of art that I believe in and feel proud of."

In fact, she says, she’d much prefer to be on location in the mountains than making a film on a studio lot in Hollywood. "I actually don’t like working in Los Angeles; I much prefer to be in the mountains somewhere. I love not being contactable. This is something I get lost in and then I come back into the world."

Rumours of hot off-screen goings-on between the divorced Kidman and Law (who has since divorced from Sadie Frost) have been downplayed by the mother-of-two. Indeed she won substantial damages from various newspapers this year for suggestions of a relationship. "Nothing crossed over into our personal lives," Kidman says of the pair’s on-screen romance.

She is currently dating musician Lenny Kravitz, but she’s adamant that rumours of an engagement are way off. Although Kravitz has endeared himself to Kidman’s two adopted children (she shares custody with Cruise), ten-year-old Isabella and Conor, eight, she insists: "I’m not ready for marriage yet. I would love to meet my own Inman and have a baby, That would be lovely, but I haven’t found my Inman yet. I don’t think he’s in my life yet."

Although Cold Mountain is due for release next week and is already being tipped for Oscar and Bafta success, Kidman is not sitting still. She is finishing up the filming of a Frank Oz remake of the Stepford Wives in which she reprises the Katharine Ross role as the Stepford men’s victim, and she’s also completed Jonathan Glazer’s mystery-drama, Birth, where she plays a woman convinced that a ten-year-old boy is the reincarnation of her dead husband. And next month she will be seen in The Human Stain, a harrowing thriller based on Philip Roth’s novel in which she plays a school janitor conducting an affair with a classics professor (Anthony Hopkins) who is not all he seems. Playing a 20-something working-class woman in love with a 70-year-old man was not a problem, she declares.

"Age doesn’t matter in true affairs of the heart," she says. "The reason why people choose each other, we never know. I’m proud to be playing complicated women and putting different relationships on screen."

Next year is also busy. She’s due to star opposite Sean Penn in the South African-themed thriller The Interpreter, and she’s teaming up with Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann again for his biopic of Alexander the Great. Then there’s Bewitched and Emma’s War.

It’s no wonder she’s looking forward to a break. "I do need to take some time with my kids," she says. "Over the holidays I want to get my kids to an island, grab a bikini and a cocktail. I’m going to read some books, cook a bit, play cards with my parents and play Scrabble."

It’s as far from Cold Mountain as she could get.

- Cold Mountain opens on Boxing Day
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