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1. Her love of theatre started with panto

Kidman has acted since she was a child – she made her professional debut at the age of 16, in Bush Christmas – and she caught the acting bug in a surprising place. “My first love was theatre, and a lot of that was pantomimes,” she says. “I remember getting up on stage, I remember watching those outrageous, fun pantomimes. That was probably my first desire to be on stage.”

Nicole Kidman at the BAFTA awards in 2002.

2. Jane Campion has been her champion since she was a child

Director Jane Campion is favourite for the Best Director Oscar this year, for her film The Power Of The Dog, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Kidman calls Campion one of her oldest and most treasured influences. “I was in a little drama school called Phillip Street Theatre,’” she says. “And Jane was in film school, so she was really young.” Campion came to watch Kidman’s group rehearse. “I remember people whispering, ‘There’s a director here!’” Kidman was told this young director wanted to see her for a short film role. “40 years later, I still know her… She became a guide.” Kidman auditioned for several of Campion’s movies but the first role she actually got was in Portrait Of A Lady. Kidman found it an incredibly emotional experience – Wilson mentions a documentary that shows Kidman sobbing between takes – but trusted Campion. “As an actor, you have to be very careful with the people you choose to bare your soul to.”

3. She was an introvert

Kidman felt separate from the popular kids when she was young. “I was very tall and very pale. I had red, curly hair and I was covered in freckles,” she says. “I think my sense of belonging, in terms of belonging to the cool kids, wasn’t there. Primarily being an introvert, I’ve subsequently found out, there was an innate shyness, but there was something I could do and that was act… That became the place that I felt comfortable.”

4. She had her first kiss watching The Shining

As a teenager drawn to film, Kidman would sometimes “wag off” school to see films, which is how she discovered Stanley Kubrick. “I saw A Clockwork Orange and I didn’t understand any of it. I just sat there with my jaw on the floor,” she says. But it was Kubrick’s The Shining that proved to be a defining experience. “I made out to The Shining,” she says, “which says something really weird about me. I had my first kiss [watching] The Shining, which is just totally weird.”

5. The first person she ever loved and lost was Stanley Kubrick

Later in her career, Kidman would go on to work with Kubrick, in Eyes Wide Shut, with her then husband Tom Cruise. It was an intense shoot, taking over two years, thanks to Kubrick’s famous attention to detail and insistence on doing as many takes as needed to get exactly what he wanted, even if that meant over 100. Kidman had no reservations about the long shoot. “I would have shot that thing for five years, I didn’t care,” she says. “I’m with the greatest filmmaker. I’m with my husband. I’ve got my kids there.” She became very close to Kubrick, who died just a few days after the film was completed. Kidman was devastated. “Leon [Kubrick’s assistant] said, ‘Stanley Kubrick is dead’. I remember dropping the phone and screaming. That was probably my first encounter with death where it comes and a person you love is taken quickly and it doesn’t seem real. It was horrendous.”

6. Moulin Rouge! was the first time she’d really sung

Kidman has many transformative moments in her career. Her role in Dead Calm, which she says was re-written for her, after originally being planned for a much older woman, rocketed her to fame. The dark comedy To Die For woke people up to her chameleon abilities as an actress. Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 musical Moulin Rouge! is arguably the film that elevated her from actress to movie star. She played all-singing, all-dancing courtesan Satine. “[Luhrmann] took a massive chance with me, believed I could sing and dance and act in the same film,” she says. “I watch that film and I can’t believe I made that. I’m so happy I got to be Satine.” It was the first time she’d sung properly. “I’d sung at drama school… I was never that good but I could hold a tune.” She sang Carly Simon’s Nobody Does It Better for her Moulin Rouge! audition. “The audition was six hours!” she says. But worth it.

7. She was depressed when she played Virginia Woolf

Kidman won an Oscar in 2003 for playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours. It was a role she didn’t think she was suitable for and she tried to persuade director Stephen Daldry that she should play a different role. “Me for Virginia Woolf?’” she says. “Trust your director. That’s what I learned from that.” The role saw her play Woolf as she battles through an unhappy life, eventually committing suicide. It came at a hard time in Kidman’s own life. “I was in a place myself at that time that was removed, depressed, not in my own body. The idea of Virginia coming through me, I was pretty much an open vessel for it to happen.” Kidman says she’s often been drawn to roles filled with pain. “I’ve circled roles that deal with grief and loss, more than most. I have no idea why, but I have played those women repeatedly.”

8. She has plans to return to theatre

Kidman has only had two major theatre appearances but they’ve both won her enormous acclaim. The first was 1999’s The Blue Room, in which she played multiple roles. “I look back and I wasn’t that scared,” she says. “I didn’t have stage fright to the degree I had it when I did Photograph 51. I’ve now learned a lot of actors get [more intense stage fright] as they get older.” Photograph 51, about Rosalind Franklin, a scientist whose contribution to the discovery of DNA was largely erased from history, was her second major theatre appearance, in 2015. She has hopes of returning. “There’s something I’m circling with a director,” she says, cautiously. “He’s a film director but he’s also got a lot of theatre experience. He sent me something and I was like, ‘Oooh, I’m going to have to bleed for this. Am I ready to bleed every night? Yikes’. I have to consider that, but I’m getting drawn there.”

9. She’ll never direct

For a lot of successful actors, the goal is to one day direct their own films. Not for Kidman. “I love being an actor,” she says, simply. “I don’t have the control. I don’t want to make the big decisions. I want to be part of the group. I don’t want to be the leader!” Her daughter, however, is a different story. “I’m watching her, she only wants to be a director. She’s obsessed with being a director. I do believe the great directors that’s what they do. I want to be an actor [laughs].”