A Celebration of Women™

is elated to Celebrate the Life of this generous heart, a woman that rose above her own challenges and circumstances, like enduring her mother’s breast cancer as a child – then pulled from school to home care of a parent. 

She pushed beyond her fears never giving up; and achieved her dreams!

Through childhood uprooting, career, bouts of depression, infertility, love and marriage, motherhood and life, this driven soul also devotes much of her life to activism in the realm of Women’s Rights, donating her time to causes in around the world from her birth place of Hawaii through her home in Australia to very emotional stops like Kosovo.

The impact her experience had on her soul, inspired her to work diligently to promote women’s rights worldwide through her support of the International Violence against Women Act, presenting over 5,000,000 signatures to the UN Secretary-General on 25 November 2008 to create Positive Change for all Women.

She has now been appointed as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador to promote ‘Women’s Rights Worldwide‘.

 

 
 

WOMAN of ACTION™

 

 

Nicole Kidman

 
 
 
 
Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, while her Australian parents were temporarily in the United States on educational visas.

Kidman can therefore claim citizenship in Australia and the United States.

Her father, Antony David Kidman, is a biochemist, clinical psychologist, and author.

Her mother, Janelle Ann (née Glenny), is a nursing instructor who edits her husband’s books and was a member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.

Kidman’s ancestry includes Scottish and Irish.

At the time of Kidman’s birth, her father was a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He soon became a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health of the United States. Opposed to the war in Vietnam, which was causing social unrest in both Australia and the United States, Kidman’s parents participated in anti-war protests while they were living in Washington, D.C. The family returned to Australia when Kidman was four and her parents now live on Sydney’s North Shore.

Today, NICOLE Kidman’s father, a leading psychologist, has called for urgent funding from the Gillard Government to prevent tens of thousands of children as young as 12 from developing schizophrenia.

The humanitarian and philanthropist qualities have not fallen far from the tree.

Kidman has a younger sister, Antonia Kidman, a journalist and TV presenter.

Kidman attended Lane Cove Public School and North Sydney Girls’ High School. She was enrolled in ballet at three and showed her natural talent for acting in her primary and high school years.

Kidman revealed she was timid as a child, saying, “I am very shy – really shy – I even had a stutter as a kid, which I slowly got over, but I still regress into that shyness. So I don’t like walking into a crowded restaurant by myself; I don’t like going to a party by myself.”

 
In 1984, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, which caused Kidman to temporarily halt her education and help provide for the family by working as a massage therapist at age seventeen.

 
She studied at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Victoria, and at the Phillip Street Theatre in Sydney, with actress and friend Naomi Watts who had attended the same high school.

This was followed by attending the Australian Theatre for Young People.

Here she took up drama, mime and performing in her teens, finding acting to be a refuge.
 
 
Due to her fair skin and naturally red hair, the Australian sun forced the young Kidman to rehearse in halls of the theatre. A regular at the Phillip Street Theatre, she received both encouragement and praise to pursue acting full-time.

Kidman has been married twice: first to actor Tom Cruise, and now to country singer Keith Urban. She has an adopted son and daughter with Cruise as well as two biological daughters with Urban.

Kidman met Cruise in November 1989 on the set of their 1990 movie Days of Thunder.

She and Cruise were married on Christmas Eve 1990 in Telluride, Colorado.

The couple adopted a daughter, Isabella Jane (born 1992), and a son, Connor Anthony (born 1995). On 5 February 2001, the couple’s spokesperson announced their separation. Cruise filed for divorce two days later, and the marriage was dissolved in August of that year, with Cruise citing irreconcilable differences. During her divorce from Tom Cruise, she stated that she did not want their children raised as Scientologists. She has been reluctant to discuss Scientology since her divorce.

The actress raised 18-year-old Isabella and Connor, 15, with ex-husband Tom Cruise and is saddened by their decision to live with their father, his wife Katie Holmes and their four-year-old daughter Suri.

She said: “They live with Tom, which was their choice. I’d love them to live with us, but what can you do?”

However, despite the distance between them, Nicole said she was proud of her elder children, telling Associated Press:

‘They are healthy and sane and together and are great, great people. So I’m not one of those people that needs to be reminded of what I have.’

Nicole hasn’t been photographed with her older children since she started filming Australia in mid 2007, although they are frequently seen with Tom and Katie.

Prior to marrying Cruise, Kidman lived with Australian stage actor Marcus Graham in the late 1980s. In the mid-1980s, she dated her Windrider co-star Tom Burlinson, whom she lived with on and off for three years, according to biographer Andrew Morton.

She dated musician Lenny Kravitz from 2003 to 2004.

Robbie Williams stated that he had a short romance with Kidman on her yacht in 2004.

In a 2007 interview, Kidman revealed that she was secretly engaged to someone between her marriages to Cruise and Urban but did not identify who this was.

These were the days that Kidman suffered some serious depression, and worked through the darkness, nevering giving up until she once again found the light.

The Moulin Rouge star said a ‘miracle’ finally came along when she conceived her first biological child Sunday Rose after wedding 44-year-old Aussie country crooner Keith Urban in 2006.

Nicole also revealed that her beautiful toddler Sunday Rose was named after the day of week that she and musician husband Keith Urban most enjoyed spending together. She explained: ‘When we were both alone, before we met each other, Sunday was the day we dreaded most, because when you don’t have someone in your life Sundays can be really lonely.

‘Then when we met, we went from dreading Sunday to really loving it. It was the day when nobody was going to bother you, you could stay in bed, you could do what you wanted to do. We just thought, What a great name for our baby!’

The Oscar winner told Who magazine: ‘I had so much time thinking that wasn’t going to happen in my life and trying to understand that. When it did happen – and for it to be a surprise – that was great.

I had tried and failed and failed and failed. Not to be too detailed, but I’ve had an ectopic pregnancy, miscarriages and I’ve had fertility treatments. I’ve done all the stuff you can possibly do to try get pregnant.’

Nicole added: ‘Every woman who has been through all those ups and downs knows the depression that comes with it. So the way it just happened with Sunday was like, “What?” The percentages were so low. It is the miracle in my life.’

Kidman met her second husband, Australian country singer Keith Urban, at G’Day LA, an event honoring Australians, in January 2005. They married on 25 June 2006, at Cardinal Cerretti Memorial Chapel in the grounds of St Patrick’s Estate, Manly in Sydney.

They maintain homes in Sydney, Sutton Forest (New South Wales, Australia), Los Angeles, and Nashville (Tennessee, USA).

The couple’s first daughter, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, was born in 2008, in Nashville. She was delighted to have become a parent again later in life, having given birth daughter Sunday Rose with husband Keith Urban in July 2008.

 
She admitted: “It’s a beautiful thing at 43 to have a two and half year old!”

Kidman’s father said the daughter’s middle name was after Urban’s late grandmother, Rose.

In 2010, Kidman and Urban had their second daughter, Faith Margaret Kidman Urban, via surrogacy at Nashville’s Centennial Women’s Hospital. Faith’s middle name is after Kidman’s late grandmother.

Kidman is a practicing Roman Catholic.

She attended Mary Mackillop Chapel in North Sydney. Following criticism of The Golden Compass by Catholic leaders as anti-Catholic, Kidman told Entertainment Weekly that “the Catholic Church is part of her ‘essence‘“, and that her religious beliefs would prevent her from taking a role in a film she perceived was anti-Catholic.

Kidman has donated to U.S. Democratic party candidates.

In 2002, Kidman first appeared on the Australian rich list published annually in the Business Review Weekly with an estimated net worth of A$122 million. In the 2011 published list, Kidman’s wealth was estimated at A$304 million, down from A$329 million in 2010.

Kidman has raised money for, and drawn attention to, ‘disadvantaged children around the world‘.

Kidman joined the Little Tee Campaign for breast cancer care to design T-shirts or vests to raise money to fight the disease; motivated by her mother’s own battle with breast cancer in 1984.

In the 2006 Australia Day Honours, Kidman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for …

“service to the performing arts as an acclaimed motion picture performer, to health care through contributions to improve medical treatment for women and children and advocacy for cancer research, to youth as a principal supporter of young performing artists, and to humanitarian causes in Australia and internationally.”

However, due to film commitments and her wedding to Urban, it was 13 April 2007 that she was presented with the honor. It was presented by the Governor-General of Australia, Major General Michael Jeffery, in a ceremony at Government House, Canberra.
 

A Stellar Film Career

Nicole Kidman’s first acting role was as a sheep in a school nativity play. She was five years old. By l0 she had joined an acting school and by 14 she had her first lead role in the Australian film Bush Christmas. By the time Nicole was 19 the acclaimed Hollywood director George Miller (Babe, Happy Feet) had written the TV mini-series Vietnam and Bangkok Hilton for her to star in.

Nicole says she is lucky because she knew from a very young age that she wanted to build her life around acting.
 

Her dream has come true.

 
This powerhouse is an Australian actress, singer and film producer.

Kidman’s film career began in 1983.

She starred in various Australian film and television productions until her breakthrough in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. Following several films over the early 1990s, she came to worldwide recognition for her performances in Days of Thunder (1990), Far and Away (1992), and Batman Forever (1995). She followed these with other successful films in the late 1990s. Her performance in the musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001) earned her second Golden Globe Award and first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Her performance as Virginia Woolf in the drama film The Hours (2002) received critical acclaim and earned Kidman the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Kidman’s other notable films include To Die For (1995), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), The Others (2001), Cold Mountain (2003), The Interpreter (2005) and Australia (2008).

Her performance in 2010’s Rabbit Hole (which she also produced) earned Kidman further accolades, including a third Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2012, she earned her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her role in Hemingway & Gellhorn.

 
As a result of being born to Australian parents in Hawaii, Kidman has dual citizenship in Australia and the United States.

Kidman founded and owns the production company Blossom Films.
 

The Activist: Nicole Kidman Takes A Stand In Aussie Coal Movement

Nicole Kidman meets up with actress pal Naomi Watts for lunch at The Winery restaurant on Sunday (March 18) in Sydney, Australia.

The 44-year-old Aussie actress and her family, hubby Keith Urban and girlsSunday and Faith, arrived Down Under a few days earlier.

PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics ofNicole Kidman

Nicole and Keith have recently taken a public stand against the expansion of coal and gas mining in New South Wales in Australia.

The couple bought a sign that reads ‘No coal or Coal Seam Gas’ and placed it on the gates of their house, according to an Aussie newspaper.

 
In 1994, she was appointed a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, and in 2004, she was honored as a “Citizen of the World” by the United Nations.

Kidman was appointed goodwill ambassador of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in 2006.

In this capacity, Kidman has addressed international audiences at UN events, raised awareness through the media and testified before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs to support the International Violence against Women Act.

Kidman visited Kosovo in 2006 to learn about women’s experiences of conflict and UNIFEM’s support efforts. She was the international spokesperson for UNIFEM’s Say NO – UNiTE to End Violence against Women initiative.

Kidman and the UNIFEM executive director presented over five million signatures collected during the first phase of this to the UN Secretary-General on 25 November 2008.

In the beginning of 2009, Kidman appeared in a series of postage stamps featuring Australian actors. She, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett each appear twice in the series: once as themselves and once as their Academy Award-winning character.

On 8 January 2010, alongside Nancy Pelosi, Joan Chen and Joe Torre, Kidman attended the ceremony to help Family Violence Prevention Fund break ground on a new international center located in the Presidio of San Francisco.

In 2012, UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman has received the Humanitarian Award of the Kuwait-America Foundation for her work on behalf of women around the world, along with a donation of $250,000.

The funds will benefit a UN Women initiative in one of Jordan’s poorest rural areas to enhance women’s economic empowerment.

Nicole says; “I gratefully accept this award on behalf of a rather large group of people: the women of the world. As the Goodwill Ambassador of UN Women, I have seen that there is no limit to what women can achieve when given the opportunity,” said Nicole Kidman at the Foundation’s benefit gala dinner in Washington.

She continued: ”This is why UN Women puts strong emphasis on women’s economic security and political participation. Women need to be able to take the decisions that shape their lives and their societies. Economic autonomy means greater independence in all aspects of life: it helps women to feed their families and send their children to school so that they can get a proper education for a better future. Having an income can also provide a way out of a violent home. Working with UN Women, I have learned about the horrific scope of violence against women around the world and seen its devastating impact.”

Actress and UN Women Acting Head Lakshmi Puri to be honoured today by Cinema for Peace Foundation in Berlin: “UN Women a global champion for women and girls”

(Berlin, 12 July) UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman and UN Women Acting Head Lakshmi Puri are to receive awards from the Cinema for Peace Foundation today. They will be honoured at an evening event in Berlin, Germany. The Government of Germany is among UN Women’s leading donors.
 

“Women represent half of humanity, and of its potential. Yet around the world women are still deprived of a life free from discrimination and violence. We applaud the establishment of UN Women as a global champion for women and girls,” said the Board of the Cinema for Peace Foundation in its decision to honour UN Women and its Goodwill Ambassador. “Nicole Kidman has helped give a voice to countless women who are survivors of gender-based violence. She is a role model for others.”

 
Acting Head of UN Women Lakshmi Puri and UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman on the red carpet in Berlin. (Photo: Getty Images/Luca Teuchmann) Nicole Kidman was appointed as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador to promote women’s rights worldwide.

A strong focus of her efforts has been on ending violence against women. Ms. Kidman has served as the international spokesperson for UN Women’s “Say NO – UNiTE to End Violence against Women” initiative, and has travelled to meet with survivors of sexual violence and raise attention to this pervasive human rights violation worldwide.

Speaking on the issue and her engagement as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, Nicole Kidman said:
 

“I have learned much about the horrific scope of violence against women around the world and seen its devastating impact. When I first learned that one in three women and girls experience violence in their lifetime, I was utterly shocked. Much of my work for UN Women has since been dedicated to this issue.”

 

Cinema for Peace has since 2001 served as a forum to bring together internationally renowned figures from the fields of film, politics and society to raise awareness on humanitarian issues.

Assistant Secretary-General and UN Women Acting Head Lakshmi Puri expressed her appreciation for the Foundation’s work and award, stressing the need for strong partnerships in light of the persistent challenges for women’s empowerment and gender equality.

“There is so much to do. Right now, we are looking to Egypt where UN Women has supported women since the early stages of the democratic transition. At this crucial juncture, women must be part of a peaceful and democratic dialogue to determine the country’s future,” added Ms. Puri. “In Syria, too, women must fully take part in the mediation and reconciliation process. UN Women is an advocate and supporter of women there so this can happen.”

Today’s event will welcome guests representing politics, private sector and entertainment. Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court; Bianca Jagger, Ambassador for the Council of Europe; and German actress Veronica Ferres will present the awards.
 
 

FIND NICOLE HERE

An advance photo of the event in Berlin will be available through Getty photos at 6:00 p.m., Central European Summer Time.

More photo and video material will be made available at the same link after the event.

More information about Cinema for Peace

More information about UN Women

Nicole Kidman – Official Website

Nicole Kidman – Facebook

Nicole Kidman – Twitter @NicoleKidman

 
 
 
 

A Celebration of Women™

 

welcomes this devoted and driven humanitarian among women into our global alumni with open arms, looking forward to celebrating many future positive actions, positive change; all bettering the lives of all women and children.

 

 

Brava Nicole!