A final look at this year’s Emmy winner for Outstanding Actress in a Limited Series or Movie: Nicole Kidman playing Celeste Wright in HBO’s Big Little Lies (2017, Jean-Marc Vallée). Also pictured: Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley and Alexander Skarsgård.
“While I watched Kidman, it was impossible not to think of all her other roles. I first saw her in the terrifying Dead Calm, in which she faked love for her rapist in order to survive. Then, there was Eyes Wide Shut, about a woman whose tightly wound husband (played by her tightly wound then-husband, Tom Cruise) goes crazy, because he suspects that she once had a sexual fantasy — not even an affair! — about someone other than him. She was even better as the manipulator in To Die For, playing a girlish spider whose flies had no chance. In each role, there is something waxen and watchful and self-possessed about Kidman, so that, even when she’s smiling, she never seems liberated. While other actors specialize in transparency, Kidman has a different gift: she can wear a mask and simultaneously let you feel what it’s like to hide behind it. As Celeste, she keeps lowering her head and raising her eyes, always feminine, glamorous, and diplomatic. It makes it all the more powerful to watch Kidman’s eyes connect with someone else's whenever something big happens — when she realizes, over drinks, that Madeline is lying about her marriage, too; when she bubbles with taboo joy at the notion of going back to work. In one lovely scene, Jane tells her new friends how detached she feels, as if she were peering at them from far away rather than sitting with the two of them. As Madeline chatters, Celeste stays quiet, locking eyes with Jane. The camera holds on the two of them, capturing the early alchemy of a friendship — and the suggestion that, even in mean-girl world, women might choose to be allies instead of enemies.” — Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker (March 2017)