We sat down with Nicole Kidman earlier this week when she did promotional duties for Paddington, the surprisingly hilarious adaptation of the much-loved books for tiny tots. Kidman camps it up to the hilt as the cartoon villain of the piece - a scowling taxidermist tottering on spiked heels, eager to snatch the unsuspecting hero, fill him with stuffing and shove him in a trophy case.
In the interview, which you can play in full above, she is the first to admit that the movie was a gamble and declares with obvious relief, “I’m just really happy to be in a movie that’s surprisingly good.”
Without wanting to make the light kid-centric comedy sound too worthy, you can't ignore the strong ‘embrace diversity’ message running throughout. When asked to elaborate, Kidman replies: “We need to be very open minded about different people and embrace all cultures. And that’s a good thing to teach little kids these days; to quietly infiltrate their consciousness that way.”
Elsewhere, Kidman talks about her "spontaneity" shen it comes to choosing roles, but also her focus on returning to work in Australia when the role is right. She has an upcoming Australian movie Strangerland, which is set to premiere at Sundance next month. Down the track, she'll be returning to shoot Lion, in which she'll play the Australian mother of an adopted Indian boy, who in real life, used Google Earth to track down his birth mother.
Paddington is now showing in cinemas.
