On screen, Nicole Kidman never plays it safe

CANNES, FRANCE Im not interested in being safe, and Im willing to fail because of that, Nicole Kidman declares, not a shred of doubt in her voice. I feel very ashamed when I do something safe.

That may sound like the easy thing for an actress to say sitting in a quiet cabana at the luxurious Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. But throughout her career, which includes three Oscar nominations, Kidman has always walked that particular walk as well as talked it and never more so than this year.

Kidman has two films showing this year at the Cannes Film Festival (Philip Kaufmans Hemingway & Gellhorn and Lee Daniels The Paperboy), and they showcase her in roles that couldnt be more wildly different.

As far as Kidman is concerned, that is a very good thing.

The diversity of characters is the thing Im most interested in, she says. I dont think I do well playing myself.

In Hemingway & Gellhorn, Kidman plays journalist Martha Gellhorn, married to the novelist (played by Clive Owen) for five years but best remembered today as one of the 20th centurys great war reporters.

I dont get to read many scripts that are going to be made that are driven by a woman, Kidman, 44, says of her interest in the project. Shes a woman who sacrifices a lot, who doesnt compromise, for a force she feels inside her, which is to tell the stories of people around her.

If this HBO production and Kidmans role in it share the pleasant feeling of classic, almost glamorous, filmmaking, The Paperboy, adapted from the Pete Dexter novel, is something else again.

A lurid, wildly excessive melodrama that depicts rural Florida in the 1960s as a cesspool of feverish mendacity, Paperboy features the actress totally convincing as a character fellow residents of Moat County describe as an oversexed Barbie doll.

That would be Charlotte Bless, a woman of formidable, unapologetic sexuality whose main activity is starting epistolary romances with death row inmates.

She focuses on Hillary Van Wet! ter (Joh n Cusack), a sullen, white-trash alligator hunter behind bars for killing the local sheriff, and convinces Miami journalist Ward James (Matthew McConaughey) and his younger brother Jack (Zac Efron) that his claims of innocence are worth investigating.

A maelstrom of seething emotions, Paperboy features scenes of extreme and graphic sexuality.

In taking the part, Kidman was guided, as she often is, by her connection with the filmmaker. I believe in putting an enormous amount of trust in your director, and Im willing to take the knocks if it doesnt work, she says.

Ive chosen that path, chosen to contribute, and I have to trust as an actor and try not to be a control freak.

Because Kidman makes decisions about parts on a gut level, she is used to hearing criticism about her choices.

There are so many different opinions out there, it is so extreme, diverse and loud, there is so much noise, that to get caught up in that seems like minutia, she says.

What she does feel is protective of the director. I worry about how theyre going to fare. Im there, but its them, theyre putting themselves on the line.

The thing Kidman feels most protective about, however, is her marriage to country star Keith Urban and her two youngest children, four-year-old Sunday and 17-month-old Faith. (She has two other children from her previous marriage to Tom Cruise.)

Thats my priority in terms of my life, she says, noting she and Urban try not to be apart for more than three or four days.

Projects Kidman takes now must factor family in. Six months in Africa, I cant do that, she says. I cannot stand to be away from the girls. Im not willing to leave them, its very painful. I attach very deeply, and there are ramifications, pain to endure, if you allow yourself to attach and love to that extreme.

The couple and their children live outside Nashville, Tenn., an area Kidman enjoys because among other reasons it is removed from the limelight.

When you get to this age, I want! to brea the, I can go with the flow of it, she explains. Theres still a fire that ignites in me creatively, but I know how to put it out for a while.

That fire is also the one thing Kidman is not willing to do without professionally. As you get older, you can lose that abandonment, she says. I want to stay in that place of Try it, why not. I very much still try to maintain that artistically.

Kidman looks thoughtful when reminded that when she was a teenager beginning serious acting in Australia, she decided to model her career on Katharine Hepburn: She wasnt going to marry or have kids, she was just going to act.

I knew the thing I need to do was seek out my path artistically, she says. A burning force within me wanted to go out and explore the world, have experiences. If I was going to fall in love at 18 and have a child, I would not have done that.

In my psyche, the desire to find a partner was very strong, but I didnt want to give in to that. I had to fight against what I knew my nature was.

Los Angeles Times