Beauty Archivist: What Makes a Great Nicole Kidman Look?

Words: Grace Ellington

“Nicole Kidman’s ‘terrible’ Vanity Fair cover outfit has fans ‘shocked’” ran Page Six in response to her appearance in the viral Miu Miu mini and crop top look that dominated 2022. Why exactly her fans were so shocked by the sexy outfit and coquettish pose doesn’t make a lot of sense for an actress whose career has repeatedly been defined by roles that see Kidman as an empowered erotic figure and an agent of female desire well into her 50s. That Kidman has continued to play roles where she is sexy, has her own sexual appetite, and this is not treated as a sort of punchline is pretty anomalous in an industry that has historically had such a hard time seeing actresses over 35 through a sexual lens. Now, with the release of Halina Reijn’s Babygirl whipping everyone into a frenzy it feels like a perfect time to look back at Kidman’s career and the persona which seems to effortlessly encapsulate both a sort of Martha Stewart-esque buttoned up perfection and a deeply vital siren quality. 

Central to Nicole Kidman’s image is a duality that, obviously along with the classic ageism, might go some way to explaining the general public's surprised reaction to seeing her in the Miu Miu look. Whilst sexual power is a large feature of many classic Kidman roles, she also represents an icy imperiousness, an aura of wealth and containment that, to me, aligns her with Grace Kelly making her a contemporary call back to the Hitchcock Blonde.

In a recent review of Babygirl, The Guardian describes Kidman as an “actor with a face so notoriously stiff it has confined her to playing rich women.” And whilst this is pretty true, what prevents it being off putting is Kidman’s ability and willingness to skewer this archetype, and therefore to some extent herself, so ruthlessly. In most Nicole Kidman roles this type is normally a facade. Classically she’s not just a rich woman, but a rich woman with a sinister secret, and her complex display of manners is always threatening to come unraveled. For all her restraint and waspiness, you always get the sense that her characters are pulsing just beneath the cool exterior, and Nicole's performances can oscillate from poised to unhinged in a beat.
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Tracking the different sides of Nicole often comes down to her most iconic feature, her hair or, yes sometimes, her wigs. It’s a cliche, but blonde Nicole with her buttery, extremely expensive looking The Perfect Couple (2024) blow-dry, cuts a much more imperious controlled figure than the Botticelli curls of Dead Calm (1989) or Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Kidman often moves back into her more natural tones of red or strawberry blonde in roles where she is more emotionally vulnerable like Babygirl (2025), Big Little Lies (2017) or The Undoing (2020). There’s an obvious false stereotype here of red hair being equated with wildness or sexuality, but I think in Nicole’s case its more to do with the obvious artificiality of her as a blonde - you know when you see her in a rootless platinum you’re looking at a woman who never drops her poise and never misses her fortnightly touch ups. 

“Nicole is one of the last classic movie stars in the sense that her persona is larger than any role she is given.”

One of my favourite of these impossibly coiffed blonde looks is in Gus Van Sant’s 1995 film To Die For. Nicole is Suzanne Stone, a seemingly naive, wannabe television star whose fluffy volume bob, pastel skirt suits and syrupy sweetness are the lure for Joaquin Phoenix’s disaffected grunge teen who can only describe her as being “so, so, clean”. Yet, like a lot of Kidman’s best characters, Suzanne Stone is much more desirous, dangerous and callous than her perfect image suggests and she knows how to wield that image as a weapon against the men that fall for it.

Male anxiety around the impossibility of containing or satiating such a beautiful and seemingly in control woman, is a repeat theme in many Nicole Kidman films. Most notably Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut in which Tom Cruise’s character’s journey through a dream like sequence of sinister and surreal sexual encounters is incited by Kidman’s character Alice’s confession she has fantasised about another man. It’s hard to believe that in 1999, when the film was released, it would have been understandable that a man would be so triggered by the idea that his wife enjoys sex and maybe even thinks about it. Yet you only have to circle back to Kidman’s Vanity Fair cover to see that a lot of people are still uncomfortable with a woman being not just an object of desire, but being confident centering herself as an agent of it. 

Nicole is one of the last classic movie stars in the sense that her persona is larger than any role she is given. She is able to be tragic, dramatic, comedic or satirical in a given role, yet it's always a Nicole Kidman movie. She has provided us with some of the best memes of all time - special mention to her Tom Cruise divorce pap shots - but never loses her stature. She has an Instagram account but she never feels relatable. But most importantly, to me, that Nicole has repeatedly explored roles that explore and subvert the power dynamics of love and lust and continues to do this in her 50s, a period of life where a lot of women describe themselves as being at their most sexually empowered but at the same are desexualised by media, is what makes her pretty singular and iconic.