Nicole Kidman‘s new erotic drama Babygirl debuted at the Venice Film Festival. It earned a 7-minute standing ovation and received an avalanche of praise for its erotic depiction of an age-gap affair.
Kidman plays Romy, a CEO who embarks on a stormy dalliance with her intern, Samuel (played by Harris Dickinson). Refreshingly candid at the best of times, Kidman said filming the “radically long” sex scene left her feeling “ragged.” She told Vanity Fair, “I’ve made some films that are pretty exposing, but not like this.”
Vanity Fair has given Babygirl a glowing review, saying it “blasted through collective shame” and was a “masterclass in kink” celebrating sexual fantasies, masturbation, power and secrecy in sex.
Dutch director Halina Reijn has said Babygirl is, in part, a tribute to her love of erotic drama, saying she drew inspiration from pictures like Basic Instinct and Indecent Proposal, saying they left her feeling less alone with her own darker fantasies and desires.
While we anticipate Babygirl, we reflected on the many memorable sex scenes Kidman has had throughout her career. True to her word, a look through her oeuvre shows she has had some exposing cinematic dalliances.
From eerie romances to BDSM thrillers and haunting, grief-stricken lovemaking, we’ve called it: Nicole Kidman is one of the great erotic actors of her generation. She’s the perfect muse for Reijn’s kinky age gap drama, and while we wait for Babygirl we’re looking through all the times, from sponge baths and jellyfishes to power games and kinks, the 57-year-old has pushed our boundaries and our buttons on screen.
Nicole Kidman’s 9 Best Sex Scenes To Date:
Nicole Kidman’s Sex Scene in Dead Calm (1989): Sleeping With The Enemy
The 1989 Australian psychological thriller Dead Calm put Nicole Kidman on the map as a rising star. Kidman starred alongside Sam Neill as a bereaved couple seeking solace on stormy waters. When they pick up castaway Hughie Warriner, played by Billy Zane, it’s immediately obvious all is not what it seems. While their act of kindness is poorly repaid, it does result in one of the steamier sex scenes in 1980s cinematic history.
Spice: 8/10
Nicole Kidman’s Sex Scene To Die For (1995): The Art Of The Tease
Before To Die For, Kidman was a star on the rise, having made her international debut in Philip Noyce’s Dead Calm (1989) and appearing in husband Tom Cruise’s vehicles Days of Thunder (1990) and Far and Away (1992). In these films, Kidman played innocent wives and girlfriends to big-gun actors.
According to Hollywood legend, when Meg Ryan dropped out of the project, Gus Van Sant was sceptical that Kidman could pull off the diabolical, fame-hungry, and frankly odd Suzanne Stone. However, Kidman lobbied hard and won a role that would redefine her as a go-to actress for complex, sexy oddballs with great wardrobes.
In To Die For, Nicole Kidman’s character, Suzanne Stone Maretto, plays Joaquin Phoenix and Matt Dillon like fiddles. While her clueless husband, played by Dillon, describes her as “pure, delicate, and innocence”, Maretto is leveraging her considerable sex appeal to corral a group of infatuated teenagers, Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix, Russel (Casey Affleck) and Lydia (Alison Folland) to do some very dirty work for her. In To Die For Kidman is all about control; her interactions with her co-stars Pheonix and Folland are as sexually tense as a bowstring. Hot stuff.
Spice: 7 out of 10
Nicole Kidman Sex Scene Eyes Wide Shut (1999): Passive Aggressive Couple Sex
In Eyes Wide Shut, Kidman was back at Cruise’s side, on a far more even playing field in Stanely Kubrick’s final film. In the film, Kidman is back playing a sexually less-than-satisfied wife. She tells her husband (Cruise) that she contemplated having an affair, and he becomes obsessed with getting one up on her, leading to his adventures in an underground sex club. But, it’s the chemistry between Kidman and Cruise in a solo session you should be tuning in for (the gothic masked orgies are an acquired taste).
Eyes Wide Shut was the couple’s last film together, with Tom Cruise filing for divorce two years later. In a 25th anniversary interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kidman agreed that Kubrick may have been “mining” the couple’s off-screen relationship for inspiration: “He knew how to manage us.” She also shared that the couple shared a trailer, and Cruise kept himself busy playing Minesweeper during downtime. Their chemistry on-screen gives a glimpse into what sustained their relationship through the challenges of Scientology and video games for 11 years.
Spice: 7.5 out of 10
Nicole Kidman’s Sex Scene Birthday Girl (2001): Lackluster Hand Jobs and Russian Bondage
On Letterboxd, one review of this peculiar 2000s rom-com come bank heist thriller reads: “In Birthday Girl, Nicole Kidman lights up a stale piece of cake”, which sums up the film and Kidman’s charming performance.
The erotic comedy received mixed reviews but Kidman’s turn as Russian mail-order bride “Sophia” is comedic perfection. Kidman learnt Russian to play a frustrated newlywed navigating a serious language gap; her character tries to navigate the linguistic gap with BDSM, and her bank clerk husband realises he’s bitten off more than he can chew. While one fed-up handjob scene is more slapstick than erotic, Birthday Girl showcases Kidman’s dedication to her craft (she learnt Russian!) and penchant for the raunchy and weird to great effect.
Spice: 5/10
Nicole Kidman’s Sex Scene The Paperboy (2012): Prison Sex And Jellyfish Drama
Babygirl is far from Kidman’s first piece of age-gap cinema erotica. The Paperboy followed To Die For in a long line of films in which Kidman seduces the younger generation. Kidman takes a turn as Charlotte Bless, a peroxide blonde, false lashed to the nine Florida bombshell, becomes lust-object to Zac Efron‘s Jack, a college dropout and brother to aspiring investigative journalist Ward Jansen. Kidman’s prison sex scene with felon and on-screen love interest John Cusack was overshadowed by a sexually frustrating trip to the beach with Efron that ended in a jellyfish and urination.
Spice: 7/10
Nicole Kidman Sex Scene A Family Affair (2024): An Age Gap Reunion For The Ages
The Paperboy proved to be training wheels for Kidman and Efrron – and ten years later in the Netflix series A Family Affair. In the sex scene, Kidman slams Efron against the wall before ripping off his shirt. Efron confesses to People magazine that he was apprehensive about the script but that the sex scene with Kidman was “seamless, natural and fun”. We love an onscreen friendship.
Spice: 8/10
Nicole Kidman Sex Scene The Killing Of A Sacred Dear: The Most Disturbing Nicole Kidman Sex Scene Hands Down
A perfect example of Kidman’s comfort with the deeply weird in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, Kidman lies prone in her underwear as her surgeon husband, played by Colin Pharrel, paces about. It’s a kinky sexual ritual in which Kidman seems to pretend to be chemically knocked out. It’s a sex scene fittingly disturbing as the film itself and characteristic of Lanthimos-esque approach to erotic cinema.
Spice: 2/10
Nicole Kidman Sex Scene Rabbit Hole: Grief
Rabbit Hole is a heartbreaking film in which happy couple Howi (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Nicole Kidman) are plunged into grief following the death of their four-year-old son. Their relationship begins to tear apart as their needs fracture, and the sex scene is a raw cinematic depiction of the complexities of grief. It’s not hot, but it is deeply moving and melancholic.
Spice: 3/10
Nicole Kidman Sex Scene The Beguiled: Sponge Bath
Nicole Kidman is a master of restrained eroticism, and many of her sexiest moments in cinema come short of full sex. In Sophie Coppola’s movie The Beguiled. Kidman plays Martha Farnsworth, a headmistress of a school for girls who take in a wounded soldier as a guest. The presence of a man at a school full of deeply religious girls soon becomes problematic, foreshadowed by a sponge bath scene that Kidman recounted on The Graham Norton Show took a full day. For those who watched, the moment in which Miss Martha scrubs the wounded soldier’s bare torso is TENSE.
Spice: 9/10
What Is The Babygirl Australian Release Date?
Babygirl will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10th 2024, before making its way to Australia for a Christmas Day theatrical release on December 25th 2024,
This article originally appeared on Marie Claire Australia and is republished here with permission.
