Nicole Kidman has explained why she had to pause shooting sex scenes for her forthcoming movie Babygirl.
The drama, made by Bodies Bodies Bodies filmmaker Halina Reijn, follows a powerful CEO who jeopardises her career and family life by having an affair with a younger intern.
Kidman, 58, stars alongside Antonio Banderas, 64, as her husband and The Iron Claw star Harris Dickinson, 28, who plays the employee that turns her life upside down.
Speaking to The Sun, Kidman revealed that performing scenes with Banderas and Dickinson at times became too intense.
“There was an enormous amount of sharing and trust and then frustration. It’s like, ‘Don’t touch me,’” she said.
Kidman continued: “There were times when we were shooting where I was like, ‘I don’t want to orgasm any more. Don’t come near me. I hate doing this. I don’t care if I am never touched again in my life! I’m over it.’
“It was so present all the time for me that it was almost like a burnout,” she added.
The Oscar winner said she was originally attracted to the sexually charged project because it was “an area [she’d] never been” before.
“I’ve always been on a quest as an actor,” she explained. “I’m always going, where have I not been? And what can I explore as a human being? And this was an area I’d never been.”
Kidman has already received critical recognition for her performance in Babygirl following the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where she was awarded Best Actress.
Writing from Venice, The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab said of her performance: “We’ve all seen Kidman in TV dramas like The Perfect Couple and Expats, giving accomplished but slightly stiff and mannered performances. Here, she digs much deeper.
“Reijn is one of the Netherlands’ most respected stage actors, well known for her work with the controversial Ivo van Hove,” he added of the film’s director.
“She elicits Kidman’s best performance in years as the headstrong, fiercely independent business woman whose sexual submissiveness never seems like weakness. A film that could have slipped into voyeuristic prurience is instead witty, subversive and emotionally revealing.”
In her director’s statement at Venice, Reijn said that the affair at the heart of Babygirl allows Kidman and Dickinson’s characters “to play out their confusion around power, gender, age, hierarchy, and primal instinct.
“Despite its forbidden nature, the joy of that exploration is liberating, even healing.”
Babygirl will be released in cinemas on 10 January, 2025.
