{"id":188770,"date":"2025-10-04T02:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T02:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/188770\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T02:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T02:49:08","slug":"it-wasnt-long-before-the-sexist-haters-blamed-nicole-kidman-and-her-erotic-roles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/188770\/","title":{"rendered":"It wasn\u2019t long before the sexist haters blamed Nicole Kidman and her \u201cerotic roles\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

According<\/a> to a \u201csource close to the family\u201d, this \u201cinterview brought out an issue that had been simmering for a while. Keith supported Nicole\u2019s career, but he found questions about her sex scenes uncomfortable. It left him embarrassed.\u201d Then \u201canother insider\u201d revealed the couple had argued about this: \u201cNicole felt on-screen intimacy was simply part of her job, but Keith didn\u2019t see it that way. The latest film brought those differences into focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

One tabloid explained: \u201cKeith is said to have \u2018struggled\u2019 with his wife\u2019s racy new image, and perhaps it\u2019s no wonder given the intensity of her commitment to her erotic roles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sigh. Kidman has played many roles in recent years, including an expatriate in Hong Kong in Expats, a Viking queen in The Northman, a CIA supervisor in Lioness, another queen in Aquaman and a teacher in Holland. Yes, she also starred in Babygirl as a lustful CEO who had an affair with a handsome office junior \u2013 played by Harris Dickinson \u2013 almost three decades younger than her. This did lead to some peculiar scenes with milk-drinking \u2013 both on and off-screen \u2013 that were quite perplexing. As was her declaration that she had to pause filming because she was having \u201ctoo many orgasms<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

But then this alleged behaviour was dragged off-screen, with some suggesting that the real problem<\/a> for Urban was Kidman\u2019s \u201cinsatiable desire for sex\u201d, IRL. Wanting sex! Ugh, everyone knows men hate that.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

In Babygirl, this milk-drinking scene is a tipping point for her torrid relationship with the office junior.Credit: Niko Tavernise<\/p>\n

Aside from the odd awkward milk moment<\/a> (Kidman downing a glass of milk at press conferences to mimic a sexually charged scene in the film), we seem to forget how counter cultural it is to have a woman in her late 50s playing a sexual lead in a film.<\/p>\n

As Kidman<\/a> herself said: \u201cA lot of times women are discarded at a certain period of their career as a sexual being. So it was really beautiful to be seen in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy character has reached a stage where she\u2019s got all this power,\u201d she said, \u201cbut she\u2019s not sure who she is, what she wants, what she desires, even though she seems to have it all. And I think that\u2019s really relatable.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s really relatable is that sometimes life doesn\u2019t mould into the shapes we want it to, and we stand before it, frustrated sculptors throwing mashed clay onto the floor. That no one really \u201chas it all\u201d, and even the very concept is a distraction, something women are repeatedly told not to want.<\/p>\n

As I said, I have no idea what happened in the Urban-Kidman marriage and honestly don\u2019t really need to know. It may be complicated. It may have ground down over years. It may have been one last gruelling argument. It may be communication problems. It may be the blinding pain of betrayal. There may be \u2026 so many things. Any which way, it\u2019s doubtless painful and sad.<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

It\u2019s uncomfortable, though, watching how, the moment a talented, beautiful woman separates from a man she is shamed for her talent, her beauty, her sexuality.<\/p>\n

In the hype of conjecture, we often forget the facts: if it is, in fact, Urban who has called time, before Kidman filed, we do know that makes it an unusual midlife divorce. Researchers have repeatedly shown women initiate divorce more and do better<\/a> psychologically after divorce than men.<\/p>\n

Urban has described Kidman as \u201cotherworldly\u201d, and she has always seemed ethereal, pale and somehow cool, remote, and notably determined to express erotic affection towards her husband, nuzzling his tanned neck in public, closing her eyes whenever his face approaches hers, a kind of intensity that the jaded saw as a curious kind of performance and the hopeful as a sign of enduring romance.<\/p>\n

It can\u2019t be easy for a musician and a movie star to maintain a marriage, or even sanity, sometimes, in that rarefied air of celebrity.<\/p>\n

Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist. Her latest book is Bright Shining: how grace changes everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to a \u201csource close to the family\u201d, this \u201cinterview brought out an issue that had been simmering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-188770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}